a farewell to arms.

I started this book about a year ago but found myself not processing the words at all, so I had to put it down. Upon giving it a second try, I forced myself to go back and re-read if I felt I was not paying attention. Hemingway has an odd way of providing his readers with a a dramatic and intense plot that is hidden in slow, banal language.

The story is about an American man, Frederic Henry, who joins the Italian army during WWI as an ambulance driver. He falls in love with a British nurse named Catherine Barkley who cares for him when he is sent to her hospital in Milan after being wounded. When he recovers, he must head back to the horror and the chaos that lie the front lines of the war. Upon facing a likely execution due to the injustice and madness of Italian officials, he jumps into a river to escape and makes his way back to Catherine who is pregnant with his child. With the help of an old friend who works as a bartender in the hotel they stay in, they escape in the middle of the night to Switzerland where they hope to welcome their baby, get married, and live in peace and safety for the rest of their lives. Unfortunately, the story does not end well.

The writing is slow in this novel and I couldn't tell if it was Hemingway's writing style or if his aim was to make an analogy about how numb to emotion Henry becomes while fighting in an ugly war. The men around him talk often of how horrible and unjustified war is but Henry rarely chimes in with his own genuine opinions. Even when Henry tells his readers about his time with Catherine - a time that Henry thinks is filled with passion and emotion - readers are still left hanging with a feeling of banality. I think what this does, though, is raise the question of just how real Henry and Barkley's feelings for one another are. Have they truly found love in a time of death and destruction, or do they simply want to find a way to distract themselves and give some new meaning to their lives even if it is not authentic?

I enjoyed the story once it was over, but I didn't necessarily enjoy reading it. I'll have to read another Hemingway book to see if I'm really a fan or not. I actually own The Sun Also Rises so I'll be giving that book a shot too.