Rating:  Summary: The Best Review: This is simply the best book I have ever read. The writing is as strong and powerfull as a swift kick to the head. This book will make you want to get on a plane and fly to Pamplona Spain.
Rating:  Summary: a wonderful tale of life and drinking! Review: This is a great peice of work. it stays true to life and reveals the thrill of life added through drink.
Rating:  Summary: A wonderful work of literature. Review: This is but one example of the masterful use of prose which Ernest Hemingway displayed again and again in his wonderful literary career. This is definitely a book that I would recommend to anyone interested in fine literature, as well as anyone looking to free their mind from the daily grind. Hemingway writes about the dreariness of everyday life, but somehow manages to take this life up to the next level, making it a paragon of escapism available to all who can pick up his books and simply lose themselves in them.
Rating:  Summary: A wonderful Hemingway novel. Review: More than most books, this one is a comprehensive, whole piece of literature. The title adds so much to the story that it would be considerably diminished if it were called anything else. It has all the Hemingway keystones, flawed macho protagonist, love, death, fascinating locations. And the story moves. He doesn't tell about the story, he tells the story.
Rating:  Summary: A terrific story!! Review: Hemmingway is terrific with dialouge. An extremely funny book and at the same time, it's sad.
Rating:  Summary: Enjoyable, no masterpiece Review: Maybe I would have gotten more out of this in an English class, with some supplemental analysis of historical context and autobiographical reference. I'll assume this is a fairly accurate portrait of Europe between the wars and the dissipated doings of an expatriate leisure class. It vividly captures an endless party milieu in Paris and Spain at fiesta time. Beyond that, I didn't find it very rewarding in either plot or character development. A group of friends eat and drink and screw around, and seldom reveal any sincere or recognizably human feelings as they speak in dirt-simple declarative sentences to one another. The central relationship between Jake and Brett is intriguingly problematic (his impotence from a war wound is implied), but thinly realized. Overall, a fine evocation of a time and place, but otherwise pretty lightweight.
Rating:  Summary: This book was great!! Review: I had to read this book for my English class and I loved it. I really recommend this book.
Rating:  Summary: Excellent, true, blantantly honest and starkly real Review: Hemingway's beautifully poignant work, The Sun Also Rises, defines the stark reality of emotion, attitudes, wills, temper, and love. His characters, although apparently unaffected, are the prime examples of the legacy of a lost generation.
Rating:  Summary: An exceptional piece of American Literature. Review: Hemingway is one of the most important authors the United States has ever produced for several reasons. The first being that he emerged in a period in history when not only America, but the world was searching for something to hold on to after it was discovered that the safe, secure and unchanging world of the nineteenth century was destroyed and replaced by a world of travel, communication, and war of unbefore seen horrors. The second being that his feeling of dispossession filled not only the vetrans of WWI, but also the entire generation from which he came, which had to attempt to fit in to this new world. The third and most important feature of Hemingway's writing is that its cut-down, terse, and abrupt speech was designed not out of a lack of "eloquent" writing abilities, but it was so that every man and woman in America and in the world could grasp everything he tried to save in his works. Hemingway did more to revolutionize modern writing then any other author in American literature. In the "The Sun Also Rises" we see Jake Barnes, the tragic hero who cannot be happy with Brett, so instead does what he can to support her. Other characters in the novel contrast Barnes by being given every advantage in the world but choose to do nothing with them. The bullfighter is the true hero, who every man wants to be, but cannot. It is through these characters that Hemingway presents the paradox of life which encircles and destroys some, like himself. Although it is true that these characters drink, participate in promiscuous activities, and seem to waste their lives, it is this which Hemingway wants to present to the reader, that for his generation and all others similarly affected, there is nothing in life but these wanton indulgences. Hemingway lets the reader see the tragedy of these distorted souls, but presents hope with the title and the promise of a new generation. The whole existence of humanity and our failed dreams can be demonstrated by the final dialogue between Brett and Jake, "Damn, we could have had such a good time together!" Jake replies, "Yes, isn't it pretty to think so." With this statement Hemingway presents to the world everything that is sad and grotesque about human life and the way that these shortcomings make the world a beautiful place and worth the fighting for.
Rating:  Summary: Great book that stays with you Review: This book is best appreciated by people who are in their late 20's or older, esp. those who have travelled or lived in Europe. The book's vivid descriptions (you can almost feel the heat on your back in the fishing scenes) and strong characterizations (Jake especially) seem to get MORE REAL the more time you spend in Europe. As you pass low signs on mass graves in Belgium ("Morts par les Allemagnes") and remember an entire generation was wiped out for-- well, not much, the moodiness and the tense chatter of the characters make sense. In Europe you don't just see where this happened, you see how it could have.
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