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Last Saturday the clerk Barnes and Noble saw me looking over a stack of the
classics and calmly asks “Ever read this one?” What he handed me was
a copy of The Sun Also Rises.
“No,” I said.
“Well you should. The female character is amazing, every man has had a
love just like her.”
Well, that was enough to hook me. I brought the book home and devoured it in
a single weekend. The Sun Also Rises is Ernest Hemingway’s first
novel published in America and his tight, terse style isn’t yet fully developed.
Some of the passages are awkward and often three and four way conversations
occur without identification of the person talking. You have to pay attention
closely until you learn how each member of the cast speaks. The dialect is almost
eighty years out of date but the rhythm of the words becomes natural very quickly,
as does the sound of the characters’ voices. Each syllable of dialogue
is true to the character speaking it.
The Sun Also Rises is the story of a group of Americans and Englishmen
on the European continent in the years between the First World War and the start
of the Depression. The group is made up of four men and a woman who has romantic
ties to three of the men. These members of “The Lost Generation” travel
from Paris to Spain to see the fiesta and bullfights. Each of them has depth
and an interesting story to tell.
All the characters Hemingway creates are vivid and real. They have traits that
you like in people ones you will wish they didn’t possess. Lady Brett Ashley
is indeed a woman that every man has loved at some point. Full of fire and passion,
she pulls men under her spell without trying, but has no problem enjoying the
perks of their attention before she breaks their heart. Robert Cohn is the kid
that got picked on in school and never developed social skills. Even his friends
wonder why they let him stay around. Jake Barnes, the story’s narrator,
simultaneously loves and can’t stand Brett while trying to be indifferent
to her. Michael is bankrupt and waiting on a divorce so he can marry Brett.
Bill is Jake’s American friend that manages to not fall for Brett. The
relationships are too complicated to explain here. Exactly like they would be
in real life. Yet in the last chapter of the book Hemingway perfectly explains
Jake’s relationship to Brett in six sentences.
This is a great book written by the man who changed the way American fiction
is written. By the final page you are emotionally attached to each of the players
in the book. The end brings the story to a close very nicely but leaves you
thinking about what must have happened to each of them the next day. Especially
Brett, because if you’re a man, you’ll know exactly who she was in
your life.
This book is a must have for anyone’s library.
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