The Sun Also Rises (E. Hemingway)

I've always loved Hemingway.

My friend Denise will tell you this is a lie because I love words, and Hemingway never played with "big words." As a matter of fact, he once told Faulkner, after Faulkner trashed The Old Man and the Sea in a brutal review, that "he knows [the ten dollar words]" but prefers the "older, simpler" ones, for those, too, can portray emotion just as deeply.

I never got around to The Sun Also Rises. I've read The Old Man and the Sea too many times to count. I've finished his entire short story collection. But I never escaped into his novels, nor really much wished to, until I read The Paris Wife, a novel about Hemingway's time in Europe, told through the perspective of his first wife, Hadley. The Sun Also Rises was written during and inspired by that experience, so when I knew I needed to add a book I should have read in high school to this challenge, I went with it.

The novel centers around the protagonist Jake Barnes and his tumultuous relationship with Lady Brett Ashley. Told in three parts, the story doesn't follow the path of the traditional love story, but rather follows the more Existential approach to love and life - there's no real reason why we meet, why we fall for one another, nor why it does or doesn't work out. As a result, the plot weaves in and out of heartache, passion, friendship, and betrayal as chaotically as Hemingway believes it is in real life. It's void of the flowery language found in Fitzgerald's novels written at the same time, dealing with many of the same ideas, but its blunt and sincere approach to life is refreshingly honest.