In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
In Our Time is an Ernest Hemingway sampler pack. All his favorite topics are in here: fishing, literature, drinking, bullfighting, horses, war, hobos. If you like Hemingway for his choice of topics, you’ll find something to enjoy here.
People write a lot about the last chapter of Ulysses. My own theory about it is that it has a particular and rare kind of enjoyment to offer. Which is that it’s been subjecting you to some kind of discomfort, and then at the end, it releases you from it. Like, the author has walled you into a crypt, and the last chapter knocks a hole in the bricks and lets the sun in.
For Ulysses, the prison is the over-analytical minds of Bloom and Dedalus. The Molly chapter finally lets in some light. For In Our Time, the prison is all interpersonal relationships. Heartache and pride and anger and fear. The Big Two-Hearted River chapter, in which Nick does nothing but hunt and fish, is our escape from all that.
This has made me think a lot about how to end a novel. There are a lot of strategies, of course. But if your novel has been full of complexity and difficulty, letting up at the end might be good. Giving the reader a door out. This probably won’t work if your book has been a rollicking good time from the start. Which is why a certain kind of reader might find Big Two-Hearted River boring.
But I liked it. After so many painful yet beautiful portraits of human complexity, it’s a relief. He returns to the simple pleasure of living off the land.
It is very, very American.
View all my reviews