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Slow,
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9 reviews

The Sun Also Rises
by Ernest Hemingway

Published: 2003
Paperback : 254 pages
22 members reading this now
63 clubs reading this now
19 members have read this book
Recommended to book clubs by 6 of 9 members

The Sun Also Rises was Ernest Hemingway's first big novel, and immediately established Hemingway as one of the great prose stylists, and one of the preeminent writers of his time. It is also the book that encapsulates the angst of the post-World War I generation, known ...

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Introduction

The Sun Also Rises was Ernest Hemingway's first big novel, and immediately established Hemingway as one of the great prose stylists, and one of the preeminent writers of his time. It is also the book that encapsulates the angst of the post-World War I generation, known as the Lost Generation. This poignantly beautiful story of a group of American and English expatriates in Paris on an excursion to Pamplona represents a dramatic step forward for Hemingway's evolving style. Featuring Left Bank Paris in the 1920s and brutally realistic descriptions of bullfighting in Spain, the story is about the flamboyant Lady Brett Ashley and the hapless Jake Barnes. In an age of moral bankruptcy, spiritual dissolution, unrealized love, and vanishing illusions, this is the Lost Generation.

Editorial Review

The Sun Also Rises first appeared in 1926, and yet it's as fresh and clean and fine as it ever was, maybe finer. Hemingway's famously plain declarative sentences linger in the mind like poetry: "Brett was damned good-looking. She wore a slipover jersey sweater and a tweed skirt, and her hair was brushed back like a boy's. She started all that." His cast of thirtysomething dissolute expatriates--Brett and her drunken fiancé, Mike Campbell, the unhappy Princeton Jewish boxer Robert Cohn, the sardonic novelist Bill Gorton--are as familiar as the "cool crowd" we all once knew. No wonder this quintessential lost-generation novel has inspired several generations of imitators, in style as well as lifestyle.

Jake Barnes, Hemingway's narrator with a mysterious war wound that has left him sexually incapable, is the heart and soul of the book. Brett, the beautiful, doomed English woman he adores, provides the glamour of natural chic and sexual unattainability. Alcohol and post-World War I anomie fuel the plot: weary of drinking and dancing in Paris cafés, the expatriate gang decamps for the Spanish town of Pamplona for the "wonderful nightmare" of a week-long fiesta. Brett, with fiancé and ex-lover Cohn in tow, breaks hearts all around until she falls, briefly, for the handsome teenage bullfighter Pedro Romero. "My God! he's a lovely boy," she tells Jake. "And how I would love to see him get into those clothes. He must use a shoe-horn." Whereupon the party disbands.

But what's most shocking about the book is its lean, adjective-free style. The Sun Also Rises is Hemingway's masterpiece--one of them, anyway--and no matter how many times you've read it or how you feel about the manners and morals of the characters, you won't be able to resist its spell. This is a classic that really does live up to its reputation. --David Laskin

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by Elisa J. (see profile) 07/04/20

 
by Jess G. (see profile) 12/26/19

 
by Kathy M. (see profile) 09/23/19

 
by Amanda F. (see profile) 04/03/18

 
by ashley w. (see profile) 02/21/18

 
  "The Sun Also Rises"by Jennifer Z. (see profile) 03/20/12

I have never given such a gloomy review for a book; for a classic no less! Our book club members all agreed; we could have done without reading this book. Considering we read The Paris Wife last month-we... (read more)

 
  "Talk about depressing"by chris h. (see profile) 12/13/11

YUCK--I know Hemmingway was a master, but I couldn't finish this depressing saga of lost souls. How distructive and wasteful their lives were--continuous drinking and meaningless sex and struggling to... (read more)

 
  "A great book to read after traveling to Europe"by Margaret W. (see profile) 12/06/11

Ernest Hemingway does a great job at capturing European life. Love.

 
  "Didn't Get It"by Maureen L. (see profile) 08/19/11

 
  "The Sun Also Rises"by Sue G. (see profile) 08/09/11

I've run across so many allusions to Hemingways' description of running the bulls in Pamplona that I was glad to finally ready the source. The book provided insight into the 1920s.

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