My rating – 2.5 / 5
One of my goals this year is to read more books that are considered classics. I figured something by Nobel Prize winning, American author Ernest Hemingway would certainly count as a classic!
I really did not enjoy this book. I didn’t hate it, and I didn’t dislike it enough to stop reading, but it wasn’t easy. It’s easy to read, but it’s just so boring. The characters were not that likable, and there wasn’t much character development. Apparently this spare / sparse style is a Hemingway trademark.
The Sun Also Rises tells the story of Jake Barnes and Lady Brett Ashley as they travel from Paris in the 1920’s to Spain to watch the bullfights. The most descriptive passages of the book are of the bullfights, and despite taking up many pages, have little to do with the overall plot of the novel.
There’s a love triangle (quadrangle even maybe?), drinking, some fishing, more drinking, bull fights, more and more drinking, some real fights, and oh, did I mention drinking?
Page after page, I kept telling myself, “Maybe it gets better on the next page. Maybe it has a good ending”. Nope.