Rating: 
Summary: Love and Death
Review: Simply put, one of the greatest love stories ever told. The writing style, simple, basic, almost journalistic, is vintage Hemingway. It changed the way we write.
Rating:
Summary: A Highly Personal Novel
Review: I first read A Farewell to Arms three years ago. It was the first Hemingway I'd ever read, and I fell in love with his style and stories. I have since read every novel he has written and most of his short stories, and A Farewell to Arms remains my favorite. It is a wonderfully written, beautiful story, and it evoked more emotion in me than any other book I've read. Whether it will engender the same reaction from a different reader I can't say, but it seems that A Farewell to Arms is a highly personal novel, which may or may not affect the reader deeply.I highly reccomend A Farewell to Arms, or any Hemingway for that matter, if only to get a sense of his writing and to decide whether it is for you. You may not be a Hemingway person, but you HAVE to give him a try. I hope you are able to get the same enjoyment from Hemingway as I have.
Rating: 
Summary: Love, war . . . and tragedy.
Review: A Farewell to Arms has a sad air about it that is difficult to miss. Surely, this is not a book of triumph, or happiness, or joy. It's the melancholic yarn of a certain Captain Henry (though narrator of the story, a very quiet man) and Patricia Barkley, a nurse. Their romance seems to be altered by the war taking place. Captain Henry, an American lieutenant on the Italian front, has to choose between his lover or the inevitable war - much like something from a Richard Lovelace poem. A Farewell to Arms is not the best book there is, and it's not an edge-of-your-seat page-turner, but it is a wonderful and sad story that tells of the power that war has over a man's life, and the mercilessness of that war itself.
Rating: 
Summary: Dull, dated Hemingway
Review: Poor Ernest! Rather than retaining his modernist importance, his "unadorned with a vengeance" style and macho persona have fallen the way of parody and this, his "best" novel, clearly shows why. As with so many stylistic extremists, one finds oneself focusing on the writing and not on the written (the former bizarre, the latter dull and unconvincing). And his adoring women, "hot" for the hero, remind me of an old Mae West movie where the men, for no better reason than they were written that way, are constantly praising the invisible charms of our heroine. Time has moved on; so should we.
Rating:
Summary: A classic, but....
Review: I know this book is a classic, but I did not enjoy it. Though I liked Hemingway's Old Man and the Sea, Farewell to Arms seemed rather boring. It gives a realistic and fairly hopeless view of war, revealing of Hemingway's own experiences. The soldier and the nurse's love affair is also autobiographical, but somehow has an unrealistic quality. Maybe I just don't like the nurse's characther, disregarding her own identity. The action is pretty slow and though the ending is foreshadowed, it felt more like a chopping off of a story than a closing. Overall, some interesting themes and classic messages about human nature, but a slow and terse writing style.
Rating:
Summary: A Farewell To Arms
Review: This is another excellent book by Ernest Hemingway. He told the story very well. It was sad, but very good. It showed how horrible war can really be. I would recomend this book to anyone and everyone.
Rating:
Summary: The Silent Era
Review: I read this book because John Keegan recommended it in his book on WWI and because it was Hemingway and the only other writing I'd read of his was "The Old Man and the Sea" when I was in high school 30 years ago, so I felt unwashed. I read the first paragraph of the novel about six times. Great writing! A wonderfuly simplistic yet portentious description. From there the book wavered back and forth for me. His descriptions of the battlefield were certainly as realistic as I've read in fiction. But I'm sorry, I really didn't get the relationships he had with his friends. The prose was just too sparse and I just don't understand the lingua he used. I'm convinced that the hip language Hemingway used is not easily understood. Much like some of the first talkies in the early thirties contained language (read Jean Harlow) that was so hip for it's time but not very clear now, the way he talked to Catherine and she back was just too coded for me. Who was this character? After reading the book I new almost nothing about who he was, what he cared about and why he loved Catherine, though I became convinced that he did. Altogether, I found this to be somewhat puzzling, as it is reported to be a great romantic novel. Hemingway's writing was often beautiful and faultless. His way with words and phrases awe inspiring. But the hero was a schmuck.
Rating:
Summary: Farewell to Arms: A book review by Jacky Jones
Review: It is World War I. the fighting between the allied and enemy forces throughout Europe has worn on for months. Almost everyone is tired of the fighting but continue to serve for the good of their countries. For an American serving in the Italian Army, who lacks the patriotism for the country he serves, it becomes quite difficult to focus on the importance of the cause at hand. The discovery of love by Fredrico Henry proves to be a major distraction that ultimately affects the remainder of his presence (or lack of presence) in the war and his subsequent lifestyle. Ernest Hemingway left A Farewell to Arms, although with many sub-themes, with a focus on the classic theme of love and war. The focus on these two themes is evident in the way the two affect each other and in the organization that Hemingway used in the novel. Because the main character narrates the story himself the reader has a keen insight on his true feelings on both love and war. We find in the beginning of the novel that Henry has no incredibly strong viewpoint on the war itself, he seems not to like or dislike it. It is not until the presence of a person who creates love and passion in his life that a true standpoint begins to form. It is the desire to return to love that gives him the inspiration to break from his present situation later in the story. The other major character that could be considered more static, as compared to the dynamic nature of Henry's character, is Catherine. With her love and dedication she produces the inspiration in Henry that creates the changes in his character. The presence of the conflict of war in the novel is used to show the changes that it too can have directly or indirectly on a person's outlook on life. The novel is organized in a manner that seems to separate the effects of love on a life and the effects of war on that same person. The primary chapters of the book deal with the terrible images and injuries that Henry encounters during the fighting. Hemingway does an excellent job at painting a picture of the horrifying aspects of war during a specific battle scene early in the story. He also does a great job in later parts of the story at relaying the way that Henry and Catherine feel about each other. He does this with detailed inner monologues on the part of Henry, and complex but easy to understand dialogues between the two lovers. At the very beginning the novel is somewhat hard to get into because the narration starts by trying to pull the reader into an event (the war) that has already started. There is though some action that pulls you quickly into the plot, and is then followed by the basis of Henry and Catherine's romance. The book is organized in to chapters within books one through five. This separation of parts of the book, and the flow of the writing proves to make A Farewell to Arms an easy reader. One difficulty that a reader may encounter while experiencing this reading may be the complex dialogues. Sometimes the dialogues carry on for so long that it becomes hard to keep track of who is talking at what time. At times it may be necessary to go and read back through the text to understand exactly who is speaking in order to retain its significance. The plot overall is not hard to understand or hard to follow and creates a quite rewarding experience in the end. While reading this book it became quite easy to get close to the characters. Characterization is utilized well by Hemmingway to achieve this true knowledge of both Henry, and Catherine at times. The message of the book can be looked at as one that stresses the importance of love in trying times of chaos. This novel also gives an insight to the softer sides of the war. Although brutal at times, it gives outlooks into the slower and less action pact parts of fighting that are not often seen in a war novel, such as time spent with other soldiers in the mess hall, strong friendships, time in the hospital and the bliss of residing in a country neutral to the war.
Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Novel
Review: One of Hemingway's best, and one of the best war/romance novels of all time. Sparse and beautiful language, great detail, vivid characters, tragic end. An excellent novel.
Rating:
Summary: Some interesting parts, other parts are boring.
Review: Hemingway's dialogue in this novel is quite boring. The conversations between Henry and Barkley are dull. It is one thing to leave some elements of a story to the imagination of the reader, but at least provide some fertile soil in which to grow it, not inane expressions of affection (how often must Hemingway have the characters say "You're sweet" or "I love you, darling"?). The dialogue between Henry and other characters is a bit better, because it is not filled with this overly sentimental, yet superficial, content. The narrative was much better, and merits the most credit for the three stars I give this book. The descriptions of the landscape are a bit understated, but still effective in evoking some imagery for the reader. The middle chapters detailing Henry's return to duty and eventual desertion are fairly gripping, as I found myself wondering what would happen around every corner as Henry dodged Austrian soldiers and Italian battle police, at the same time being stripped of his duties, so to speak, by the desertion and death of his comrades (not to mention his uniform). Overall, the story was interesting (including the events, few they may be, of Henry and Barkley's romance), but the dialogue did little to develop it. Some people love the way Hemingway's sparse dialogue works, but not me.
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