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Summary: Audio Tape Version -- Caution
Review: You don't need my views on the literary values of this acknowledged masterpiece. What you should know is that the Books on Tape version is flawed by an annoying technical flaw -- Alexander Adam's fine baritone has been turned into a squeaky tenor by some engineer's decision to speed up the recording, presumably so it would fit onto six(!) cassettes. I corrected it by adjusting the pitch control on my expensive (and correctly calibrated) tape deck. If you don't have a pitch control (as on your car deck) be prepared for a slightly Donald Duck-like reading of the magnificent prose. Such a shame, because hearing this book read aloud reveals Hemingway's genius in yet another dimension. BTW, this seems to be a flaw in several other Books on Tape issues. Anybody from BOT listening?
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Summary: Love and War
Review: Ernest Hemingway writes a great story about love and war. It takes place durring World War 1, about a young man named Frederic Henry. Frederic is an American citizen who is serving in the Italian army. While he is near the Austria-Hungry border he falls for a girl by the name of Catherine Barkley. Catherine is a nurse at an American hospital and when Frederic was wounded in the war he was sent to her hospital. The more time he spent there the more serious the realtionship gets. When he was healed he returns to war where things go wrong so Frederic tries to flea from the Italians in search of Catherine. The book gets better as you go on as your emotions are always changing. I recomend it to anyone who likes love stories or anything to do with war.
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Summary: Brilliant
Review: A great novel, with great writing. My only complaint is the scene where Frederic Henry shoots and kills in cold blood two officers who are running away, going AWOL. But they are not in combat. They are in the middle of nowhere, so what's the real harm in them running away? It's a rotten, cold thing for Henry to do in that scene, and F. Scott Fitzgerald advised Hemingway to cut that scene. Hemingway branded Fitzgerald a wimp for wanting to cut out the violence, and left the scene in. But I think Fitzgerald was right. It's a brutal act, commited by a character that does not exhibit brutality elsewhere, and so doesn't fit. The rest of the book is great, though.
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Summary: A Farewell to Dialogue
Review: In A Farewell to Arms, Hemingway does an excellent job with his description of the events in the novel but the dialogue between Henry, the main character, and the other characters is not great. Especially when Henry talks to his English lover, Catherine Barkley, there is a great deal of shallow affection in their conversations that gets repetitive and annoying. Also in other parts there is dialogue between multiple characters and Hemingway does not distinguish between who is talking often enough, so it becomes confusing. Hemingway does a good job describing the scenery and events, especially with Henry's escape from the Austrian officers and the Spanish police, but once again that section of the book was broken up with dialogue between Henry and Barkley that ruined the mood Hemingway created. After I got around some of the dialogue, A Farewell to Arms turned out to be a good book it was worth the read.
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Summary: A Farewell To Arms review
Review: A Farewell To Arms is a literary masterpiece, and despite what other online reviewers might say, it is not predominately a war story. While a war might be going on during the book, it is primarily a love story. A story about one mans trials through love and war, mostly love. Also the feeling of being trapped. While it states that he fell madly in love with Ms.Barkley, he is ultimately relieved at not having to be formally married and starting a family. How could it be only about war, with an undertone of love, when throughout the book, Mr.Henry expresses a severe passion to leave the war, the hospital, or anywhere, to be with Cathereine? The description is incredible and the emotion you feel is amazing. You actually FEEL for the characters. That is how i feel. Thank you, and goodnight.
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Summary: The Twin Tragedies, Love and War
Review: This book has never exerted the same appeal to me as Sun Also Rises. Everyone agrees it is great but something about it leaves one feeling a bit confused. Hemingways editor Maxwell Perkins saw the book as a war novel and wanted Hemingway to change the ending ever so slightly to make the ending once again attest to that fact. But Hemingway didn't want to change his ending. As it is the book is about both love and war. The love scenes show how war effects even that most personal part of life. The war scenes alone make this a great book especially the Caparetto retreat where Hemingway sums up with a few brilliant scenes and some very memorable paragraphs his view on war. But during that second retreat, Frederik Henry and Catherine's retreat to Switzerland, it becomes a little less clear where Hemingway is taking the reader. It seems that he is saying war can be left behind but not life. And the overall view of life in the book seems to be that war is tragic and best avoided but life too is tragic. I think the book is made up of great parts but those parts do not add up to a clear overall impression. Perhaps Hemingway is saying that war is bad and lives touched by war are forever scarred and therefore will end badly. Perkins wanted Hemingway to have the last tragedy of the book be more directly connected to the overall tragedy, war. I think that would have made this a more coherent book but Hemingway's instinct perhaps was right because the book transcends the war genre because of it. Perhaps the book is about life and its tragic nature and the war is just one way we become aquainted with that tragic nature, love another. Possibly. Every reader has to answer those questions for themselves.
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Summary: A Beautiful, Passionate Novel
Review: This novel is full of beauty and passion ... set in World War One, it is the story of a young soldier and a nurse, and their love for each other, and how they move together, and keep experiencing their love.Written in Hemingway's "styleless style" (no linguistic floridity), this book in fact has its own style, based on minimist use of highly effective language. I found this book poignant, beautiful, and very moving. I highly recommend this book to everybody.
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Summary: Farewell to a Five-Star Review
Review: For a writer at the tender age of 30, Hemingway sure knows how to set the stage. The problem is, he doesn't know how to what to do with his characters. Lieutenant Henry and his love, Catherine, were so intangible that I hardly shed a tear at the novel's "tragic" conclusion. I just couldn't make myself relate to them. I also find that the whole "love story" was a little far-fetched. After knowing each other for over six months, Catherine asked her lover whether or not his father was alive. You would think that after such a long time, the two would have plenty of time to discuss things of such importance. Although Catherine's devotion for Mr.Henry was pretty convincing, his output seemed a little short. One wasn't sure where he made the transition from not planning to love her at all to wanting to be with her all the time. (If you want to read a really convincing love story, read Erich Segal's poignant work, "Love Story"). Not only was the couple in question rather questionable, but the minor characters lacked, well, character. It was difficult to distinguish Mr. Henry's "war buddies" from one another, having only dialouge to rely on. Having that said, "A Farewell to Arms" was overall a good read. Despite the fact that I was unable to sympathize with the characters, I found myself to be entranced with Mr. Henry's tale. It was quite exciting, and I always waited for his return to Catherine, and for their playful,(although somewhat silly) dialouge. Up until the end of the tale, I was satisfied. Only after the "tragedy" did all the minor problems come shame-facedly to the surface. I would recommend this book to any lover of classics, but if you're looking for a war story, this clearly isn't the book for you.
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Summary: Althought a technical failure, it is still a brilliant work
Review: Going through my bookshelf I picked out a "A farewell to Arms" both knowing nothing of the work and having great expectations because of its association with a Nobel-prize winning laureate. The work is a conflation of disappointment and incredulity. Throughout the novel I was put off by its eminently childish writing style with simplistic vocabulary and dialogue. I was turned off by the lack of an overarching or significant plot. I was disappointed that the novel didn't reveal great insights into the characters it portrayed. And, simultaneously, it serves no value as a document of the War. But, the magic, grace and ephemeral quality that one derives from the brilliance of the special moments in the book are not to be dismissed. Make no mistake about it, "A Farewell to Arms" is an easy book to read - it's short, simple and eminently readable. But, the magic of the work comes together at the end. It comes together with brilliant use of foreshadowing. It comes together in that it displays more about the reader's interest in character, reveals more about the reader's clichéd expectations of what a novel is <i>supposed to be</i>. And in that it succeeds, admirably.
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Summary: Powerful and Painful
Review: A Farewell to Arms is perhaps the most tragic love story of the novel format, written by the master himself. (For those of you who think Hemingway can't write, please send me a copy of your Nobel Prize and your comparable achievements to The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, and The Old Man and the Sea, as well as any and all war correspondance you may be the author of. I am awaiting anxiously.) The simplicity of the language, as always, only highlights the dead-on choice of words and descriptions. I won't spend much time on the plot - the romance takes place during World War I, mostly in a military hospital - but the last few pages are as masterful and devestating as anything I have ever read. What a book!
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