Often times I like to add in a classic to my reading list and given I've long been fascinated by Hemingway - as the stories about him are nearly as famous (now) as the stories by him - I thought I would pull one of his more well known novels off the shelf and give it a try. With this particular book, I must say I was a bit disappointed at some of the writing throughout the piece. Specifically, while I often found the dialogue realistic, it was almost too true-to-life and therefore incredibly boring. To me, most of the dialogue (and there's a lot of it in this book) read like a transcript rather than a work of fiction where normally the author has the chance to eliminate redundancies of common speech and move things along a bit faster for the sake of the story.

Hemingway's prose in A Farewell To Arms was most enjoyable when he was describing scene, providing a graphic depiction of his surroundings that allowed the reader to feel as though they were traveling next to Henry, the protagonist. For instance, it was if I could feel the cold November night air on the lake as he and Catherine rowed to Switzerland, or taste the innumerable bottles of brandy or wine he consumed throughout his wartime adventures, or hear the gunfire surrounding him and his compadres as they did their part in the Italian military. This bit of brilliant descriptive writing is what drew me through the book, even though the underlying story was depressing and focused on the inevitableness of our deaths with no glint of meaning or silver lining from Henry's experience. In one way, I felt as though the sense of doom I closed the book with must be just a taste of what those who witness the atrocities of war and the surrounding mayhem must feel like when they walk away from the disaster: numb, empty and hopeless.

Although I finished this novel feeling more than a bit underwhelmed, 'Papa' will continue to be a curiosity to me, both as a writer and as a human being, as he is for so many and I know I will pick up another one of his time-tested books in the future.