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For Whom The Bell Tolls November 7, 2005
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Part of the problem is the pacing, I think, which is really really slow at times when Hemingway wants to get inside the characters and show us what motivates them and what they have to lose or gain. It's really great storytelling, masterfully done, but it does go on and on sometimes, especially the parts with Robert Jordan and Maria. Another thing that kind of irked me is the colloquial tone of the book where huge chunks of it were written as if translated verbatim from Spanish. This results in a number of really awkward phrases, like "the woman of Pablo" or "I obscenity in the milk of the fascists!" I really liked Hemmingway's clean, terse style in Old Man and the Sea, but here it just felt stilted to me.
Still, I'm glad I read it as it was overall VERY well written and it did have its moments (the ending in particular was fantastic). And only a few decades late, too, as I'm pretty sure I was supposed to have read this one in high school.
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