A Farewell to Arms

by Ernest Hemingway

book data

20,561 ratings, 3.69 average rating, 1,201 reviews (more data...)

rating	frequency	%
5		23%
4		37%
3		26%
2		9%
1		3%

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published

August 18th 1994 (first published 1929) by Arrow

binding

Paperback, 304 pages

isbn

0099910101 (isbn13: 9780099910107)

description

The best American novel to emerge from World War I, A Farewell to Arms is the unforgettable story of an American ambulance driver on the Italian front...more

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05/23/08

Jason Pettus rated it:

Read in May, 2008

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com:]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted here illegally.)

The CCLaP 100: In which I read a hundred so-called "classics" for the first time, then write reports on whether or not they deserve the label

Book #17: A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway (1929)

The story in a nutshell:
Published in the late 1920s,...more

Like this review? yes (12 people liked it)

2 comments

11/18/08

Meg rated it:

Read in November, 2008

I feel like awarding the great Hemingway only two stars has officially consigned me to the seventh circle of literary hell. But I must be honest. By this website's criteria two stars indicates that a book is "okay" - and to me that describes this work perfectly.

Hemingway himself is undeniably gifted. I love his succinct style (though at times it degenerates to downright caveman-speak), his honest diction and his wonderful sense of humor. That being said, he gets away wi...more

Like this review? yes (9 people liked it)

6 comments

10/04/07

emily rated it:

Read in October, 2007

I first read this book in high school. Maybe because I was young, maybe because it was summer reading, or maybe because I read it immediately following The Invisible Man (intense!), I more or less just slid through the book, enjoying the love story and not dwelling long enough in the war episodes to feel much of anything.

The second time I read it, I didn't make it past the time in Milan. I couldn't settle into the prose and, more importantly, I couldn't handle Catherine: "I'll s...more

Like this review? yes (8 people liked it)

2 comments

04/08/08

Rebecca rated it:

(review of other edition)

Observational tragedy. Bloke falls for sub-moron during war. *petitions friendly bombs*
Hemmingway absolves language of beauty. And then the world.
His intent was to expose war's mundanity. His method rendered art menial.
*sarcastic applause*

Like this review? yes (5 people liked it)

7 comments

09/11/08

Skylar Burris rated it:

Read in January, 1999

The old joke proves itself upon reading.

Q: Why did the chicken cross the road?

A (Hemingway): To die. In the rain.

Like this review? yes (7 people liked it)

3 comments

12/29/08

Matt rated it:

(review of isbn 0684801469)

A Farewell to Arms sort of gives you the inkling that Hemingway's death will probably involve a shotgun.

It's just that sad. Front to back, this is one of the more mournful novels I've read. It's about Henry, an ambulance driver in World War I. He is wounded and falls in love with Catherine, a nurse. They exchange odd banter. They fall in love in love during a summer in Milan (but who wouldn't?). He knocks Catherine up, then returns to the front. Unfortunately for him, he is fighting...more A Farewell to Arms sort of gives you the inkling that Hemingway's death will probably involve a shotgun.

It's just that sad. Front to back, this is one of the more mournful novels I've read. It's about Henry, an ambulance driver in World War I. He is wounded and falls in love with Catherine, a nurse. They exchange odd banter. They fall in love in love during a summer in Milan (but who wouldn't?). He knocks Catherine up, then returns to the front. Unfortunately for him, he is fighting with Italians, and, as the Italians are known to do, he is soon in full retreat. (I don't know why the French get such a bad rap, the Italians haven't won a war since sacking Carthage). Henry is captured by military police and in danger of being executed, but he manages to escape. He reunites with Catherine and, inexplicably, ends up living with her in Switzerland. Things are idyllic for awhile. The lazy, languid life reminiscent of The Sun Also Rises.

Then, of course, life intervenes.

The end is tragic. Heartbreaking. The writing is brilliant, such as in Hemingway's famous line about how the world breaks us all:

"We were never lonely and never afraid when we were together. I know that the night is not the same as the day: that all things are different, that the things of the night cannot be explained in the day, because they do not then exist, and the night can be a dreadful time for lonely people once their loneliness has started. But with Catherine there was almost no difference in the night except that it was an even better time. If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry."

There's no cynicism here, just bitterness. It's prototypical Hemingway. The sparseness and terseness interspersed with long, emotion-laden sentences. I place this in the middle of For Whom the Bell Tolls, which ends badly but is full of passion and love, and The Sun Also Rises, which is like an early 20th century The Real World.

(less)

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07/28/08

Bruce rated it:

Read in July, 2008

I read all of Hemingway's major works when I was in high school and "HemingwayandFaulkner" were always presented together as contrasting literary twins. I never much liked Hemingway. He seemed as if his characters were monosyllabic tough guys without subtlety or much emotion, and reading him was like watching a John Wayne movie (which I also disliked). The dialogue seemed stiltled and the syntax boringly simple and direct. I voted for Faulkner (partly because my classmates found hi...more

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05/18/08

Jacqui rated it:

Read in November, 2000

I disliked Hemingway the first time I read him. I didn't get his prose. I thought he was a misogynist. Well, okay, perhaps he wasn't any feminist or friend of feminists, but I don't know. It was a different time, and all those excuses. Nevermind that, however, because while that was important to me on first reading his novels at age 14, it no longer is. My perspective on, well, lots of things has changed, and Hemingway is now one of my favorite writers.

You don't have to like what yo...more

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4 comments

03/29/08

Michael rated it:

(review of isbn 0684801469)

Read in April, 2008

Lord help me but I just can't get into Hemingway. I tried three times before (A Moveable Feast, The Sun Also Rises, and The Old Man and the Sea) and I plan on now trying three others, but so far with A Farewell to Arms I have the same reservations as earlier, only worse. His prose is described as "terse, tough" (this from the back of the Scribner edition), but to me it's bone dry reportage. Supposedly stoicism is what's being imparted, but why should we care when this stoicism encounte...more

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1 comment

02/20/08

Matt rated it:

Read in February, 2008

I just finished it, and I'm disappointed. And not only disappointed; I'm also bothered by it. I guess I shouldn't be surprised at Hemingway's one-dimensional, sexist portrayal of Catherine Barker, having read much of his other work, but somehow I still am. Put simply, Catherine is a ridiculous figure, and it's no fault of her own. Hemingway gives her no opportunity to sound like anything more than a half-crazy, desperate, fawning caricature with no real desires or opinions of her own. How many t...more

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01/25/08

Chris rated it:

(review of isbn 0684801469)

bookshelves: fiction

Read in February, 2006

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

As with most Hemingway, I find it hard to articulate what makes A Farewell to Arms so great. It is aboslutely exilirating. It is a simple story of a love affair between Frederic Henry and Catherine Barkley during World War I, but Hemingway's characteristic spare style and first person narration give it enormous immediacy and power.

The first time I read A Farewell to Arms I was struck by two moments in which Lt. Henry walks away from what had been his life. The first comes in the t...more

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08/30/07

Jacqueline Treiber rated it:

Read in September, 2007

Mum is the word here. As always with Hemingway. Minimalists make literature enjoyable by limiting their word choice, thereby creating a cleaner end result.

Hemingway, was not only dedicated to sparse descriptions of setting, but to an even more stunted summary of love. He describes his scenery as bluntly as he would a meaningful conversation between himself and a loved one. Farewell to Arms shows the reader a version of love that is sometimes hallucinatory, dreamy, but largely in...more

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10/06/08

Siria rated it:

bookshelves: 20th-century, american-fiction

Read in October, 2008

I've never read any Hemingway, so I thought to myself, 'Self, that is probably something you should remedy.' And now there are a couple of hours of my life that I will never get back. The macho posturing, the awful dialogue (if it were possible to have excised every word he put into the mouth of Catherine, I would have done so), the misogyny, the sometimes bizarre interactions between people... whatever the hell he was trying to do, for me it read as if everyone was either: 1) Certifiably insane...more

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2 comments

11/13/08

Sarah rated it:

(review of isbn 0684801469)

bookshelves: classics

Read in November, 2008

For those of you who didn't hear me babbling about this at SnB the other week, this is only the second Hemingway book I've ever read, although I've read a few short stories, and when I was like seven years old, we visited his house in Florida. It's a cheesy tourist trap filled with stray cats, so of course I loved it.

Basically this novel is his version of an unabashed love story, which means it's also sad, and there's a lot of drinking, and it's wartime in Italy (just pre America get...more

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07/29/08

erik graff rated it:

(review of other edition)

bookshelves: literature

Read in March, 1978

recommended to erik by: Linda Sue Harrington
recommends it for: Hemingway fans

During Union Theological Seminary's winter intercession of 1978-79 I became reacquainted with Linda Sue Harrington through my best friend and her former suitor, Michael Miley. The circumstances were unusual.

I had met Linda a couple of years before on a double date with Michael and Janny Willis. She, still in high school, was introduced to Janny and me as someone who was going deaf in a DesPlaines, Illinois restaurant after we had seen Otto Preminger's last film together. Later tha...more During Union Theological Seminary's winter intercession of 1978-79 I became reacquainted with Linda Sue Harrington through my best friend and her former suitor, Michael Miley. The circumstances were unusual.

I had met Linda a couple of years before on a double date with Michael and Janny Willis. She, still in high school, was introduced to Janny and me as someone who was going deaf in a DesPlaines, Illinois restaurant after we had seen Otto Preminger's last film together. Later that evening, in Michael's rooms while he was driving her home, Janny and I talked at some length about her condition.

Two or three years later, Michael and I were visiting Bethany Pahl in the Albany Park area in Chicago. She was expecting a gentleman caller and, wanting us and her visiting elder sister, Leslie, gone, suggested we walk over to Linda's apartment around the corner on Ainslie. At this time, Michael, having long given up on Linda, was conducting a flirtation with Leslie.

Arriving, Michael and Leslie took the couch and Linda and I retreated to the kitchen, the only public room in her basement apartment not in sight of the couch. Not really knowing her well, I asked her question as we sat on the kitchen floor brewing teapot after teapot.

Since the first meeting Linda had been involved in a Christian establishment in Park Ridge, our hometown, but had recently broken with them. Being in seminary myself, this led the questioning to topics related to biblical studies. Already positively predisposed to Linda because of our similar backgrounds, her obvious ethical concerns, her beauty and her courageous handling of her progressive aural nerve degeneration, this conversation took me over to top, surmounting reservations I had held regarding the seven year age difference between us.

I knew the bible pretty well. She knew it better. Indeed, she corrected me as regards the citation of a psalm. I was impressed, not only by her knowledge, but also by her readiness to contradict me. By the time Michael and Leslie were ready to go, hours later, I was infatuated.

Having to return to school, I managed one more, very brief, visit to the Ainslie apartment to bid farewell to Linda and ask if she'd mind a correspondence. She agreed.

Back in New York, I wrote almost immediately. She replied promptly and letters were exchanged almost daily. A recurrent theme of her letters was her frustation with the distance, eventually followed by an invitation to visit Chicago again when able.

Being practically done with school except for the thesis work which could travel with me, being flush with money saved from four years at the same job and a frugal lifestyle, I was able to return to Chicago soon thereafter, and then again and again until the stewardesses on the NYC-Erie--Chicago run knew me by name.

On one of the first of those visits, if not the first, Linda recommended I read Ernest Hemingway and gave me her copy of A Farewell to Arms. I read it as quickly as possible, probably in two days, noting it was a love story, not belaboring the fact that it was a love story ending in death, noting also that physical health was a theme, both as regards his wound and her pregnancy. I proceed, once back in New York, to pick up all the Hemingway available in the local bookstores and read them in quick succession.(less)

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05/24/08

Edmund Pickett rated it:

(review of other edition)

bookshelves: classic-novels, to-read

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

Boy meets girl. They fall in love. She dies. Oh, Darn.
That's the plot of a weepy, mediocre and incredibly popular novel and movie by Erich Segal, from maybe forty years ago, called "Love Story." It's also the plot of this "classic" by Hemingway.
More spoilers follow.
For me the book has historical interest because the protagonist is serving as an ambulance driver with the Italian Army in World War I, which in fact Hemingway did. And he describe...more Boy meets girl. They fall in love. She dies. Oh, Darn.
That's the plot of a weepy, mediocre and incredibly popular novel and movie by Erich Segal, from maybe forty years ago, called "Love Story." It's also the plot of this "classic" by Hemingway.
More spoilers follow.
For me the book has historical interest because the protagonist is serving as an ambulance driver with the Italian Army in World War I, which in fact Hemingway did. And he describes the war he saw very well, including a retreat, when a small group of men are fleeing to safety while being shot at by both armies.
Of course, to get a woman into a war story she just about has to be a nurse. How many other women do soldiers ever see? Unfortunately this nurse is not very believable. She exists so the hero can fall in love. Of course he doesn't get real weepy and sentimental, he's a tough action oriented sort of guy. But he loves her and says so repeatedly in his plain no-nonsense way. After being unjustly sentenced to death for desertion, he escapes, finds her and they flee to Switzerland so they can be free to enjoy a wintertime idyll in a picturesque cabin before she dies in childbirth. There are incidents and there is action, but not much plot. There are a number of very well drawn minor characters who appear briefly and then vanish. Obviously Hemingway kept a notebook on him and noted the eccentrics who crossed his path.
Like all alcoholic authors, Hemingway obssessively lists the type and quantity of booze every character drinks, who pays for what round, when they switch to harder stuff, etc. Orwell observed, in reference to Dickens, that it's obvious if an author went hungry as a child, because he will never merely write that a character "ate dinner." He will give you the menu. Authors who are drunks also cannot conceal their obsession.
I have a hard time understanding the appeal of this book. Hemingway's prose style, which was supposedly so revolutionary in the 20s, seems mannered, jerky and unexpressive. Of course, the book is told in first person, as the words of a man who is not your typical intellectual, a guy who wouldn't want to go on about his feelings. Point taken. But jerky prose is like stop and go driving. Nobody likes it. There were other authors in the 20s who abandoned the discursiveness of the Victorian style. Why Hemingway alone should be celebrated for this "achievement" is mysterious. I think perhaps he was just a hell of a self-promoter.
The book is very candid about social realities of the time, which may have seemed shocking when it was published. Frederick and the other soldiers are constantly going to the brothel provided by the army and he even tells Catherine about it after the fact, which seems normal to her. This may have shocked our grandparents but that doesn't make it literature.
This was my first by Hemingway. I may read another novel by Him. Maybe not.(less)

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05/23/08

reza added it (review of isbn 0684801469)

Ernest Hemingway's "A Farewell to Arms" is certainly a landmark in the genre of war fiction. The novel tells the story of Frederic Henry, an American who serves in the Italian army ambulance corps during World War I. He falls in love with Catherine Barkley, a British nurse, and has a number of traumatic experiences.

"Farewell" has a somber, haunting, and quietly compelling feel to it. In its ironic, naturalistic, and decidedly nonheroic presentation of war, the book ...more

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01/24/08

Melissa rated it:

bookshelves: teach-it

Read in December, 2008

A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway is probably my least favorite book that I teach. When I reread it last year, I was surprisingly happy with it--I very much disliked it in high school--but, this year, I was over it. Perhaps, unlike The Scarlet Letter, it cannot withstand a yearly reread.

After reading the book, I asked my two junior classes what they thought. This is a guilty pleasure of teaching. Even though most of them didn't actually read the novel, it's fun to just sit arou...more

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10/14/07

Jessica rated it:

bookshelves: love-and-other-indoor-sports, substance-related-disorders

Has a copy to sell/swap

recommends it for: people who have lost their arms?

Reading this book made me want to be a man. Specifically, it made me want to be the kind of man portrayed in a Hemingway novel (NOT The Sun Also Rises!), because even though it's obviously difficult, it seems so very, very attractive and so different from my own life.

This is a great book. I'd recommend this book to someone convalescing from a long illness in a hospital staffed by beautiful nurses. I would also recommend this book to anyone training to become a beautiful nurse (you kn...more

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07/25/07

Annette rated it:

Read in June, 2007

recommends it for: Someone who has never read contemporary literature

Hemingway is a force to be reckoned with. That is, until every modern day writer starting imitating his style. Then, us readers go back to "discover" Hemingway only to realize that it reads just like all the other minimalist literature out there today. Admittedly Hemingway started it all. Give him props for that. It's kind of like the first fat girl who got a butterfly tattoo on her left shoulder. Cool. But does it really have to be done over and over again? And by the time you...more

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"When I saw her I was in love with her. Everything turned over inside of me. She looked toward the door, saw there was no one, then she sat on the side of the bed and leaned over and kissed me." More quotes...