Across the River and into the Trees by Ernest Hemingway
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
It’s like a December-May version of the movie Before Sunrise. Except instead of Ethan Hawke, you have a bitter ex-General (now Colonel) in the US Army with some sort of terminal cardiac condition. And instead of Julie Delpy, you have a young, selfish, stupid/naive girl (or at least one who acts stupid and naive). The relationship between the two is so skeevy that you can imagine that some reviewer came up with the word just to describe this. Okay, so it’s actually nothing like Before Sunrise in that it’s very talky and the couple spends the time bouncing around a European city.
There’s practically nothing redeeming about this novel — there are flashes of Hemingway’s brilliance. Occasionally — very occasionally — the couple’s dialogue is dynamite. The conversations the Colonel has with a portrait of the girl are almost completely superior and more interesting. You have sentences like
The Colonel breakfasted with the leisure of a fighter who has been clipped badly, hears four, and knows how to relax truly for five seconds more.
You can’t hate a book that contains things like that — as much as you might want to.
It’s books like this that make me wonder if I’m just not as savvy a reader as I think, that all the literature courses I took were a waste. This was just pointless — and not in an artistic, or even Seinfeld-esque manner. The conclusion was typical for Hemingway, and broadcast for about 90% of the book. And then you get the infuriating last line, which I’ll be honest, I don’t get. Was it supposed to be funny? Nihilistic? Something else? By this point, I couldn’t bring myself to care enough to get it.
Flashes of brilliance like I said, but not enough to warrant the time or effort involved. Spare yourself.
General Reader
I love Hemingway but when he was bad he could be very very bad. I read this novel in my late teens, in my first flush of enthusiasm for the man and his works. Imagine coming from Fiesta, The Old Man and the Sea and all those great short stories to…this.
Luckily I was trying to learn speed reading at the time and this was one of the novels I chose to try out my new technique. So fortunately I didn’t waste too much time on it…
I occasionally review Hemingway over at my blog if you’re interested.
HCNewton
Yeah, this would’ve been a good one to speed read through. 🙂
I spent a little time over on your blog — great site. It’s what this one wants to be when it grows up. I’ll be back.