The Sun Also Rises
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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 The dialect is almost eighty years out of date but the rhythm of the words becomes natural very quickly, as does the sound of the characters’ voices.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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