Tag Archives: reccomendations

Written by PresidentElla

Hemingway drags out 4 days over 500 pages but I’m not complaining. (He takes his time crafting the love scenes as much as the war scenes.) He writes about the complexities of life with the same ease one makes love — fluidly and unbound.  With the same fluidity, the main character, Roberto, manages to fall in love and die in the most beautiful ways a man can.

Hemingway drops us into mountains somewhere in the middle of the Spain Civil War, introducing us to every person he meets with the brutal truth of an outsider. Living in a cave with commoners turned guerrilla, Roberto has to build himself an army and blow up a bridge in just 4 days. Maybe this is only possible in a book: for a lone soldier to befriend people enough to convince them to join his fight and give their lives for their country. Roberto spends his days learning people, giving orders and learning to give people orders. He spends his nights in a sleeping bag, waiting for his lover to arrive and help him escape, if only for a moment, into a place of pure bliss and happiness.