"The Lost Generation." Following World War I a group of friends try to find some meaning in their lives as they hang out and party and drink in Europe.

I read and reviewed this book a little over five years ago, and I'll use a lot of that review here because my thoughts about this book haven't changed. This was one of the first books I read in college that made me realize that the 'classics' weren't all dull because they sure seemed that way before I read this.

In 2016 I had this to say:

Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises is a novel of the 'Lost Generation' -- a generation that came of age during World War I. it is the story of a group of friends, British and American, who seem to have very few cares in the world other than one another. The men look to be as masculine as they can be, and the women flirtatious and non-committal.

The main character, Jake Barnes, struggles with the loss of his manhood during the war, but harbors a passion for Lady Brett Ashley. Brett hasn't been patient and has had an affair with one of Barnes' friends ... a Jew (as Hemingway constantly reminds us) ... Robert Cohn. This has created tension among the group of friends, with Cohn constantly hanging just on the periphery of the friendship circle.

It was good to read this book again. I last read it maybe thirty-plus years ago while in college. I enjoyed it then, also enjoying the teacher's shared insight into the book. Now, it was a pleasant reminder as to why I liked it so much, but it also struck some new chords, in this man in his fifties. (Now 60.)

In this reading I was really struck by Hemingway's minimalist style. I highlighted a number of passages this time, moments that work for Hemingway, but if I were to read them from any other writer, I'd assume the writer needed a better editor. For instance:

"The man who sold tackle was out, and we had to wait for him to come back. Finally he came in, and we bought a pretty good rod cheap, and two landing-nets."

Why did we need to know the man was out and they had to wait for him? Nothing happened during that wait that was worth writing about. You write something like that in a college creative writing class and the teacher will draw a red line through that first sentence.

This is the third time I've read this book (and I generally don't re-read books) and I definitely picked up more on the relationships and I rode more of an emotional rollercoaster toward Brett and Jake this time around.

Looking for a good book? If you haven't read Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, correct that right now. If you have read this book, then it's time to read it again.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

The Sun Also Rises is a thrilling classic set post-World War I illustrating a portrait of the Lost Generation who seems to have given up hope in in this postwar era. Hemingway is a poet with his words in his first novel beautifully conveying a time lost to some. The cover of this re-issue is beautiful. This is a collectible through and through. Highly recommended!!

The classic Hemingway novel about a group of expatriates carousing around Paris and Pamplona, with an added introduction, newly composed by author Amor Towles. As Towles notes in the introduction to this new addition, the novel is often referred to as "bad people behaving badly" and while that is certainly true at times, it makes for a terrific story. For those who have not read this wonderful novel, prepare to be enthralled for eternity in Hemingway's storytelling and use of language. For those who are reading it again (and again), take pleasure in being transported back to Paris in the 20's, the bullfighting arenas of Pamplona and the San Fermin festival. It truly is an astounding work and rightly stands as one of the greatest novels of all time.

Ernest Hemingway led a legendary life, becoming well known for his many passions including game hunting, fishing, serving in wars, producing fiction, womanizing, drinking, traveling, and even his suicide. However, he also began his writing career working as a newspaper reporter. That is an important detail when considering his first novel, The Sun Also Rises, because above all else that book is a roman à clef relating a fictionalized account of real events that happened to actual people. Of course, Hemingway himself was one of those people, which is where his reporting skills came in handy when turning the account into a full-length story.

The tale is set in the mid-1920s and follows an aimless group of expatriates as they travel from Paris to Spain for a fishing trip in the mountains and to celebrate at the Fiesta of San Fermín in Pamplona. These people represent the so-called Lost Generation, those men and women who came of age in the aftermath of World War I and had been so scarred by the experience to have lost all hope and sense of purpose in life. So, they spend their days in drunken and frequently mean-spirited debauchery, trying desperately to outrun their pain. That they never manage to achieve that goal is perhaps the most poignant moral of the book.

It is also worth noting the stylistic achievement that Hemingway introduced with this novel. The story is written in what one reviewer of the day called “lean, hard, athletic narrative prose that puts more literary English to shame”. Indeed, the descriptions are often simple and the dialogue seldom exceeds a single sentence spoken at a time. But, through that spare prose, the symbolism and meaning are crystal clear and quite affecting. These are not nice people that Hemingway writes about—including himself, if truth be told—but they become unforgettable characters, if only for the suffering they cause and the lack of purpose they experience. (As Amor Towles puts it in his very illuminating Introduction to this beautiful new edition, the work remains “…deeply satisfying despite essentially being a novel of unpleasant people behaving unpleasantly.”)

I should say that The Sun Also Rises is not my favorite Hemingway book. In fact, it is not even my favorite early work of the author; I found so many of the stories in the collection In Our Time to be simply stunning and far more satisfying to read. Still, this novel remains standing on its own merit almost a century after its publication. Beyond that, though, it also serves as a remarkable road map to the people who lived in a time and place that truly is becoming lost to a modern generation of readers. And, to paraphrase Towles once again, it allows us to experience the words of Hemingway the writer long before he became Hemingway the myth and legend.