The Sun Also Rises (Ernest Hemingway)

I think the cover of this book is what made me pick it up off the shelf at Indigo last week. The dust jacket is gorgeous--elegant really.

I've been slowly sampling Hemingway over the last six months or so. I will admit, I had an aversion to his writing after reading some of his short stories in my first year English courses. I was convinced that I hated him, but then I read A Moveable Feast and I changed my mind. 

I really liked The Sun Also Rises. The story is simple, but not simplistic. An American living in Paris (I love anything set in Paris) goes to Spain with a few friends to fish and to see the bull fights. They drink plenty of wine (so much that as I read I started to wish I had a bottle), sit in cafes and, for the most part, live a life of leisure. 

The introduction notes that Hemingway had recently read, and was influenced by Scott F.Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby when he wrote The Sun Also Rises. I definitely noticed the similarities in character-types and style as I read. I was left with a similar feeling at the end of both books, although I greatly preferred this one. 

The center of the novel is Brett, a somewhat helpless party girl who flutters from the arm of one man to another. Almost every man we meet in the novel is either in love with Brett or attracted to her. She's the archetype I've seen in so many 1920s/30s detective novels and black and white movies. I've grown to hate that archetype. Never in my real life have I ever encountered that woman. For such a central character, she came across as underdeveloped.

The dialogue, which was natural and humorous more than made up for the flatness of Brett. This is definitely one of the better Hemingway works I've read.