Fiesta: The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway

"Robert Cohn was once middleweight
boxing champion of Princeton."

Rated 5.2/10  (not bad)

Paris in the twenties: Pernod, parties and expatriate Americans, loose-living on money from home. Jake is wildly in love with Brett Ashley, aristocratic and irresistibly beautiful, but with an abandoned, sensuous nature that she cannot change.

My Thoughts: I appreciate Hemingway's style but I'm not sure that I really understood this book. I thought that Robert Cohn was treated really quite badly; I didn't like Brett one bit; and Mike was a bit of a monster too. It read, to me, like a lot of pretentious Americans without any compassion. Nothing much happened. Nothing much was said. And I didn't see the relationship between Brett and Jake at all. I think maybe I missed something here.

I've read a lot of reviews that suggest something different might come of this novel from a second reading - maybe even a third. I struggled through this and only just made it to the end (and I did find myself skipping a few pages after the fiesta too). I won't be reading it again to find out if they are right.

That said, I did like the atmosphere of the fiesta. I couldn't quite pinpoint as to why, but I found myself drawn into the book at that point; I think possibly Hemingway's stark writing style with no real description left my imagination to fill in the gaps. It was really quite wonderful, but there just wasn't enough of this atmosphere throughout to keep me interested. It took far too long to kick off.

I loved A Moveable Feast, but this one didn't really do it for me.

Theme: 3/5
I liked the idea of the fiesta and everything building up to a climax in Spain.

Plot: 1/5
The relationships and character's feelings were perhaps too subtle for me, and I didn't click on to the romance that was supposedly lacing the book.

Characters: 1/5 
I didn't like them. I didn't connect to any of them.

Setting: 4/5
Some brilliant settings. All the littlest details weren't filled in, which let me colour in the gaps.

Style: 4/5
I still like Hemingway's style and think that he is one of the great classic American authors.

Overall: 5.2/10