Three Comrades

Rating:
Summary: OML
Review: ...the other one being (for me) "A farewell to arms" by Hemingway.

"No passionate, happy love relationship between two common human beings possible as the entire world is about to experience one of the most brutal and violent spells of its long and tormented history". This seems to be the main leitmotif of the lost writers, an idea taken and retaken over and over again by the great Hemingway himself and others writers of his generation.

The story takes place in 1928 in the Weimar Republic right before Adolf Hitler's coming to power at the dawn of the Third Reich, just when the survivors were trying to heal the wounds caused by the WW1 and starting to hope for a better life, with another havoc hanging over their heads. Remarque writes about a life-torn, cynical man, a story of friendship and love, both being the only things that matter to him, as the world seems to go towards destruction and there's little to love or live for. Going quickly and easily through this novel pages (Remarque's writing style is simple and yet so fluid and attractive), one can almost smell the violent, melancholic, hopeless atmosphere of the pre-war hyperinflation period.

Fatalism and pessimism - that seems to be the frame of almost every single work of this great writer, like "The Arch of Triumph" and "The Black Obelisk" for instance. But if one gets to know well the life he lived and all that he's been through, one can't argue at the idea that he had no much of a choice of writing about anything else.

Rating:
Summary: One of the best books I've ever read
Review: Excellent book giving a bit of everything; realism, romance, history, humor.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: I can't remember the last time I read a book that left me with tears running down my face. This one did. The last sentence echoed in my head for days after I got done reading. Maybe not the best book of all time, but beautifully written and very touching.

Rating:
Summary: Words cannot do it justice.
Review: It is a crime that Remarque is only widely known for All Quiet on the Western Front in America. Not that that's a bad book or anything; it's one of the best books of all time. I like it very much indeed. But the fact is that Remarque never wrote a bad book, and that he wrote a great many books after Western Front. All of them are worth reading. Black Obelisk, A Life for a Life, A Time to Live and a Time to Die, Shadows in Paradise...all of them. But above all, there is Three Comrades, very much my favourite book of all time. Have you read Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises? What about Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby? Those are always the books one names when talking about literature of the Lost Generation. And they're great books too. But why isn't Three Comrades ever mentioned? It is a mystery!

Three Comrades takes place in Weimar Germany. We see hints of Hitler's rise to power. They help us picture said rise, even if they don't explain it. But the book isn't about politics - like The Sun Also Rises, it's about genuine people caught trying to find love, grace and dignity in a world increasingly devoid of all three. And they succeed, finding strength in love and friendship. And that's what this book is about - human friendship and human love, the two most important and beautiful aspects of life. The works of Remarque always feature an odd dichotomy - a sort of clash between a Romantic, highly idealized worldview and grim, bland, prosaic reality. It is this that makes his works so great - the promise that it's possible for the former to exist surrounded by the latter, hard though it may be. It is this that also allows Remarque to see the humanity present in any individual, no matter how debased or outcast (witness his attitude towards the prostitutes). It is this that makes Pat and Robert's romance the sweetest and most believable one in any book I've read. It is this, all in all, that made me genuinely sad, not only at the ending, but at having to leave the world and the people Remarque created. And no higher praise is possible.

My words can't do it any justice, so I won't go into further detail; you'll just have to read it. Hey, Mr. Publisher: how about releasing a new edition that's priced a little lower so people will actually want to buy a great book? Is that so much to ask?

Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: This is a book of three veterans of World War I trying to continue life in Germany after the war. They are like the Three Musketeers - all for one and one for all. When the narrator character falls in love, the girlfriend becomes the D'artagnon.

The characters think they have seen all that can be seen of death and are immune from any feeling relating to it. They learn otherwise as the girlfriend has a terminal injury and there is another death close to them.

Remarque is a terrific writer. He captures so well the characters and the times in which they live. The characters - both main three-four and the supporting cast jump out of the pages at the reader. (He reminds me of a German Steinbeck in the way he able to portray characters.) As the three friends plod on fighting to live well and happily in a depressed economy and a depressing time, one finds himself rooting them on.

Somehow, Remarque makes the reader have complete empathy with characters - even though we are now eighty plus years away from when they lived. Only one of the best writers of the last century could accomplish such a feat.

I rate this above Night in Lisbon and as good, if not better, than All Quiet on the WEstern Front

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant - A True Classic
Review: This is a book of three veterans of World War I trying to continue life in Germany after the war. They are like the Three Musketeers - all for one and one for all. When the narrator character falls in love, the girlfriend becomes the D'artagnon.

The characters think they have seen all that can be seen of death and are immune from any feeling relating to it. They learn otherwise as the girlfriend has a terminal injury and there is another death close to them.

Remarque is a terrific writer. He captures so well the characters and the times in which they live. The characters - both main three-four and the supporting cast jump out of the pages at the reader. (He reminds me of a German Steinbeck in the way he able to portray characters.) As the three friends plod on fighting to live well and happily in a depressed economy and a depressing time, one finds himself rooting them on.

Somehow, Remarque makes the reader have complete empathy with characters - even though we are now eighty plus years away from when they lived. Only one of the best writers of the last century could accomplish such a feat.

I rate this above Night in Lisbon and as good, if not better, than All Quiet on the WEstern Front

Rating:
Summary: Brings to life Weimar Germany.
Review: This is perhaps the most poignant of Remarque's novels. Much like Remarque's other works, it is told from a first person point of view, adding a powerful realism and humanity to the story. Three Comrades follows the story of three World War I veterans and how they survive in Weimar Germany. Robert, Otto, and Gottfried, own an auto repair shop and constantly have to scrape about for funds to stay in business. When Robert meets a mysterious young woman the story catapults into a love story as only Remarque can tell one--with great sympathy and insight into the tragic side of human existence. Using parts of his own life as a template, Remarque masterfully tells the story of Robert and Pat causing the reader to laugh and to cry with the rise and fall of the characters' dreams. Written in 1937, this book is not only a wonderful story, but an insight into the conditions that spawned the rise of the Third Reich. If you like this novel, then definitly read the Black Obelisk.

Rating:
Summary: a journey into the depths of the human spirit
Review: this is the book that got me hooked on Remarque. the story takes place in 1928. world war 1 is over, but its traces are conspicuously intertwined with the characters' lives and the world around them. the story is told through the eyes of the youngest comrade- Lohkamp. the three lead a monotonous existance in this world of violence and melancholy, an existance sweetened by the cherished bond between the three. later on, Pat, a third party, enters the life of the main character. with her presence, events unfold that bring the comrades to closer to one another, and allow them, as well as the reader, to delve deeply into the intricacy of the human spirit. overall, it is a story of life, love and war's aftermath, and anyone could learn from the humanity and occasional eccentricity i so admire in Remarque's characters.

Rating:
Summary: one of the best books i ever read
Review: three Comrades + 1. Remarque turned their car, Carl, into another comrade.

Rating:
Summary: All novels are similar, but each one is unique
Review: Three Comrades was the first book by Remarque that I've read and still I think of it as of his best novel. Under the impression from this one, without any delay I read 3 or 4 of his novels in a row and got a little dissapointed, as (it was already mentioned) many of his works have a lot in common. Later on I understood that one has to make intervals reading books by one author no matter how much you liked the first or the second one. That way the reader can appriciate the original writer's style, cherish and remember it. I don't remember any other book that made greater impression on me by depicting true human feelings and emotions.
Read it and you will be amazed to know that your own heart loves, misses, suffers, hates and cries together with "Three Comrades"' characters.