by Ernest Hemingway

isbn: 0684801469
subject: Fiction and Literature
finished: 12/12/2002

Told in Hemingway's spare, detached style, A Farewell to Arms is a love story about an American ambulance driver and an English nurse during the First World War. The uncertainty of the war drives the characters to live in the moment: they are cynical, drink too much, and expect little from the world. The dialogue between Henry and Catherine is stilted -- it has not aged well -- but their relationship and convincingly depicted, as is Henry's relationship with some of the minor characters: the disillusioned surgeon Rinaldi and an out-of-place priest. The end of the book contains a powerful depiction of an Italian retreat and the accompanying murder of retreating Italian officers, as well as the tragic finale to Henry and Catherine's relationship.