Farewell To Arms

Rating:
Summary: A tragic story about love during wartime.
Review: I love Ernest Hemingway's writing, and have read a number of his books. This is probably one of the books that he is most well-known for. The story is set on the Italian front of World War I, and it tells the story of two star-crossed lovers. Hemingway's themes for each of his books are so realistic because he experienced a lot of the things he wrote about himself. That's what makes his books so wonderful. Hemingway did not have a good opinion of war, and these thoughts come through loud and clear in this book. The story is about Lieutenant Frederic Henry, an American who has volunteered to serve with an Italian ambulance unit during World War I. Catherine Barkley is the nurse whom Frederic nicknames "Cat", and who he falls in love with. Hemingway's other characters are all equally well-drawn. His plot and his description of scenes is also wonderful Hemingway uses his descriptions of place as allegories to human well-being and luck. Hemingway associates the plains and rains with death, disease and sorrow, and the mountains and the snow with life, health and happiness. His two lovers experience happiness and safety in the mountains, but they cannot stay there indefinitely, so when they go back to the plains, bad things happen to them. A Farewell to Arms appears to be a bleak tale, but it delineates probably more than any other of Hemingway's works his fatalistic attitude to life and death. Hemingway is a wonderful author, and his works are well worth reading.

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Summary: It might have been better as a short story
Review: The best of Hemingwayis in his stories.All his novels tend to sentimentality.The old saw about Hemingway not being able to create a fully credible female character has I believe something in it. Here too there is something very artificial mannered , cliche-like about the romance. In the stories Hemingway seems more authentic, and in the novels he often seems to be parodying himself. The characters are somehow not credible True the painful ending does move . The famous line ' A man should find things that he cannot lose' does send a shudder down the spine.

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Summary: Life, love and, ultimately, survival in WWI Italy
Review: One of Hemingway's most popular books; I would say it is his best. The characters and the story are true to life and are written in a deceptively simple style. With Hemingway there are subtle signposts that prefigure each character's destiny and this book is no exception. It follows the experiences of an American ambulance driver in Cadorna's army (based on the author's own experiences in WWI Italy).

Lieutenant Frederic Henry serves on the blood-soaked Isonzo front, although the book makes only minor mention of his work there. Instead, it is about his love for Catherine Barkley - birds of a feather flock together. Both the characters have left prospering homes in search of adventure (or rather escape from boredom and convention).

The love story is the main theme of the book. And during their moments together the characters say all the same trite, often contrived, things to each other. It is real, but is it also a subtle mockery? And we get to share Henry's innermost thoughts and questions regarding Cat. Henry gets wounded and is sent back to Milan to recoup. Cat rejoins him there, and they live an almost domestic life together in the hospital. After several months, his body has recouped, but he no longer wishes to tempt death in the war. Nevertheless, he rejoins his unit in time for the Italian army's headlong retreat during the Caporetto offensive.

Henry's retreat is, in my opinion, far and away the most intense and exciting part of the book. Henry's unit, along with the rest of the Italian army, largely melts away and his story becomes one of desperate and daring personal survival. He manages to get back to Cat and escape to Switzerland with her. But there is a still another catch.

Rating:
Summary: Crisp and compelling
Review: Although it took a hundred pages or so for me to re-acclimate to Hemingway's terse, spartan style (having read several others of his prior to this), I eventually came under that old spell all over again.

Hemingway here, as in all of his novels, uses clean, seemingly simple yet astonishingly precise language to express complex emotional and dramatic situations in a way that somehow seems to evoke more vivid pictures in my mind. It's as though he knows how to understate things in just the right way to push all the right buttons in his readers.

At first, it strikes me as odd and even hollow the way he gives only succinct spoken dialogues and the barest snippets of the character's innermost thought processes yet manages, the further you read, to create such indelible impressions.

It's the same with his prose, we get simple reports of weather and atmospheric conditions, geography and topography and that's about it. Hemingway give's your mind's eye the tools it needs to create its own vision and interpretation - his genius is in how he lets us paint our own pictures.

This book is certainly a "page turner" and plenty compelling, so no worries there, but the extra measure of pleasure comes in letting yourself flow with his wonderfully crisp language and cadences. Hemingway is always like a fresh-pressed linen sheet. High thread-count and plenty good, but plain bright white. Hemingway is refreshing.

The usual Hemingway educational seminar on drinks and drinking is present (there ought to be a drinking game for Hemingway readers) and there are some pretty gory moments (like any good war movie of the screen or mind), so it'll be familiar territory, but you'll love it.

Rating:
Summary: Easily the most overrated novel of all time
Review: Evidently there was a time when Pulitzer and Nobel prizes were handed out to anyone with a typewriter, because this was the most unbearable piece of supposed "great literature" I've ever read.

Sorry folks! The last thing I want to do is offend anyone who takes pride in reading a novel that's written with an inkling of intelligence & imagination, but I just have to speak out against this one. The painfully one-dimensional dialogue made it way too difficult to sympathize with - or relate to - any of the one-dimensional characters! Also, Ernest seemed incapable of separating his sentences with a period, but was rather obsessed with using "and" to keep his paragraph-long sentences going and going and going and going and going (annoying isn't it?).

Now, maybe Hemmingway's acclaimed work gave me this impression simply because I'm a mere 30 years of age, had no connections with World War I, and I'm of the John Grisham/Dan Brown generation. Considering, however, that two of my all-time favorite books (Tolkien's "The Hobbit" & Ayn Rand's "Anthem") came out a mere decade (roughly) after "A Farewell To Arms," I doubt that I'm simply incapable of enjoying a novel written during Hemmingway's era - after all, how many flying leaps of literary prose and style could there have been during that short time between "Arms" and "Anthem?"

I'm always on the lookout for any novel (old & new) that I think may be enjoyable, interesting, or thought provoking (hopefully all of the above). So when it came to pass that I stumbled upon "Arms" in the "classics" section of the local bookstore, I purchased it thinking, "Surely, this'll be good! It was penned by an author who won so many prestigious awards, and it seems as though it's withstood that ever-challenging Test Of Time!" Shortly afterward, around page 18, I thought, "My 5-year-old nephew could write more engaging dialogue than this! I want my money back!!"

From here on out, I'll consider myself blessed that I was never forced to read any Hemmingway in high school or college. Perhaps next time I feel compelled to catch up on some classic American literature, I'll try my luck at a little Steinbeck instead.


Rating:
Summary: Hemingway's best. A classic.
Review: Many of you won't know this, but Hemingway changed the ending of A Farewell To Arms thirdy-seven times. It was the novel he spent the most time and energy on, and the result is fabulous. Just the first two pages of prose must've taken him ages. It's so beautiful. I'm not going to describe to plot. You'll read it somewhere along the line. Just one thought - I'm dissapointed at some of the reviews this novel has received up to this point. I really am. This is by far his best work. I know that taste differ, but only to a degree I might add. True
art doesn't come from the level of enjoyment you've received from it, but from the way it moulds and shapes your various thoughts and perspectives. This is Hemingway as an artist, before he became famous and later more commercial. (and later suicidal) I would like to ask reviewers who duped A Farewell To Arms to read it it again with a bit more care this time. Maybe you'll see what the rest of us are seeing - a great work of American literature.

Rating:
Summary: A balanced book that will capture any reader
Review: Although I haven't read Hemingway in depth before, I had an idea of what to expect from this book. Actually reading it, though, surprised me. Hemingway has always been known for his compact yet descriptive writing style. He tells us what we need to know and adds enough details to paint the picture, but doesn't see any need to elaborate. The writing style alone could keep me entranced in the book, although there were times when I craved more emotion than the bare facts Hemingway presents us with.

I was also intrigued by the plot. War scenes in any book tend to bore me, but these were placed carefully among Henry's interactions with Catherine, his love. The effect was one of tremendous balance. The love of the two seems quite sincere, but it is overshadowed with so much tragedy that we can't get too wrapped up in their romance.

Hemingway is not one for happy endings, and he kept true to this in the book. The ending left me with an empty feeling I didn't want, but I can only suppose that's the feeling Hemingway tried to portray.

I'd strongly recommend the book. It's a quick read and has the balance between love and war necessary to entrance any reader.

Rating:
Summary: I prefer his short stories
Review: The writing style is 'The New Yorker''s wet dream: self-conscious, overwritten, and smart. At novel length, over-written becomes, to me, truly over-written. "The Snows of Kilamanjaro" ranks in my top 5 short stories. I love his style; I love his writing. But this novel goes on and on and on. I hadn't read it before, and though I recall loving "The Sun Also Rises" long ago, I had to start skimming about 3/4 way through "A Farewell to Arms." It was too repitious. I don't mean it isn't wonderful in many ways, but how much of the same tone, style, content can we read before it begins to feel tedious?

Per the other comments, and official review: I'm surprised by this being called "sparse prose." One of the more striking and interesting elements is his use of run-on sentences -- truly, run-on sentences, complete with many uses of the word "and." He does this in such an interesting way, it's really sort of awe-inspiring. Very interesting.

I wouldn't call Henry detached or nihilistic as others have; I think he's stoic. I think his greatest personality trait is his stoicism in the face of great adversity. This, in conjunction with the writing style, makes the book.

I much prefer the war chapters to the "love" chapters. Since I didn't feel Henry falling in love, I felt little for their interaction until the end. Though, again, all elements become rather tedious. The chapters go something like this: war, war, hospital, love, war, war, war, love.... So I skimmed (I hate skimming). Then, at the end, the last few chapters are genuinely suspenseful. The end is breathtaking. The person who reads detachment here, I believe, is missing the emotional impact.

But -- this same end, this same style, can be found in his shorter works, and one doesn't need to skim or become bored. So I recommend buying a book of short stories, if you've become Hemingway-dismayed after reading this book, yet still hold out hope. The dialogue is far more interesting to read when not novel-length, in my opinion. (Agreed, too much alcohol for my taste -- but, it is what it is, and I always value the time in history, the place and person from where the art came.)

Four stars for sheer talent. And for documenting WWI through fiction.