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The Sun Also Rises
Summary: The story of a group of Americans and English on a sojourn from Paris to Paloma, evokes in poignant detail, life among the expatriates on Paris's Left Bank, during the 1920s and conveys in brutally realistic descriptions the power and danger of bullfighting in Spain.
Notes
My first Hemingway read. I appreciated a lot about this book. It makes deliberate choices when to be descriptive and when to hold back. Characters are described sparingly, with just enough shape to make them distinct without being exhaustive. On the other hand, the pace of events as the characters move through the story as well as the settings give the book atmosphere, and evoke the pleasure a Spanish holiday spent river fishing, drinking with friends, and watching bull fights.
I liked the relationship between Jake and Brett. I'm a sucker for unrequited love, and the dynamic their transparency in expressing affection for each other that can only go so far due to circumstances was sweet.
That said, I found myself asking the question, "Would Brett act this way toward Jake if his war wounds hadn't rendered him medically celibate?" His inability to have sex makes him a safe partner for her to have this sort of relationship. It surprised me later when Jake makes a similar observation himself.
“Women made such swell friends. Awfully swell. In the first place, you had to be in love with a woman to have a basis of friendship. I had been having Brett for a friend. I had not been thinking about her side of it. I had been getting something for nothing. That only delayed the presentation of the bill. The bill always came.”
It's interesting that this observation acknowledges a larger problem with the attitude men have about platonic relationships with women,