Day 1 & 2: The Sun Also Rises

After 1 full day of being a hermit, I started and finished my first book yesterday: The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway.

I managed to post a video about it last night right around midnight but did not get around to blogging about my first day. Yesterday went really well, I wasn't bored at all (partially because it was sunny and I love lying on the grass and reading in the sun) but also because I really enjoyed my first book.

I chose The Sun Also Rises from my list of Must-Read Classics because I think the title is stunning and captivating. However, I had no idea what the book was remotely about when I picked it up at the library, nor when I started reading it. Right away, I fell in love with Hemingway's writing style. I've never read anything of his before, and I was reasonably impressed. Each of his sentences are either insanely abrupt and plain or the run-ons so feared by English teachers. Yet put together, they somehow sound perfect.

However, after a few pages, I was put-off by the cryptic way in which the story was told. So little is written and yet I knew there were  a million implications that I was missing. So I fled to Google and looked up Ernest Hemingway. I would strongly suggest this if you're going to read his novel, it makes everything a little less vague. Hemingway served as a volunteer ambulance driver for the Italian Red Cross during World War I, where he was seriously injured within a few weeks. He recovered in a hospital in Milan, and it was there that he had a romantic relationship with a nurse. All this is extremely relevant to the novel as Jake Barnes, the narrator, has become impotent due to an injury in the war, and he's hopelessly in love with Brett Ashley, a nurse he met in the hospital.

While the characters in the Sun Also Rises are all fictional, it helps to be able to put it in context. Hemingway was also good friends with Gertrude Stein who referred to Hemingway's Post World War I generation as "a lost generation". This novel portrays exactly why they were a lost generation as it shows how Jacob and his group of friends and acquaintances have all misplaced their moral values after having spent the beginning of their adulthood at war.

The novel is in no sense action-packed, but I began to appreciate how Hemingway could imply so much through so little words, and display such intricate relationships. Sometimes I felt that the minute to minute descriptions dragged on for too long, but they allowed me to feel as if I was there, in that era, in their European Cafes and drinking their Pernod. Overall, the writing is gripping in an unexpected manner.

I won't give away too much about it. It's not your classic romance novel, though it does revolve around the loss of values of love. The characters are not lovable but you will feel their pain, and you will pity them. And best of all, it's a history lesson in the most engaging fashion.

Read it, it's worth your time.