Londons Falling

For Whom the Bell Tolls

02/25/10 2:02am
MSRP $16.00 $3.95 (76% off)

Reviews from Amazon:

Two Thumbs Up

Rating: 5/5
Comments:
This book gathers momentum slowly, but I guarantee that if you stick with it to the end you will be very well rewarded. I enjoyed this book for insight into history as well as military tactics. It's almost like you are behind enemy lines, eavesdropping on what is happening. But the last 40 to 50 pages swiftly gathers momentum both in action and emotional impact. But intertwined is this heart-wrenching love story, at least at the end it's heart-wrenching. I've read four of Hemingway's books, but this one ranks easily at the top. There is so much emotion and character in this book, the stuff that makes us human and heroic, and that makes Hemingway so great. The last 40 pages or so builds so much emotion, suspense, and excitement you cannot put it down. The mission climaxes, the love story climaxes, what a ride!!!

Great Novel Read Forty Years Apart [30][68]

Rating: 5/5
Comments:
Written in typical Hemingwayesque ploddingly simple style, this book morphs English and Spanish in a unique manner for its period (1940), which subsequent writers have copied or embellished. Spain is Hemingway's love. During this time, most loved Paris - like friend Fitzgerald,. But, dry heat and bull running mania were for for this man.

Spanish sayings abound in this novel about simple people asked to do a job - perhaps simple - in the name of the cause: blow up a bridge. But, the pithy and poignant statements of implyingly illiterate gypsy Pilar cannot be matched by 17th century philosophers. For example Spain, in her words, is "where blasphemy keeps pace with the austerity of religion."

When protagonist Robert Jordan speaks English for a short time to some of the group, Pilar tells him to revert to Spanish as "no language is truer." She later concludes that "Spanish is shorter and simpler."

And, Hemingway's influence on this language shows as some verbs are paradoxically used -- each time the root of Spanish for English usage. One example is to constantly implement Spanish molestar in English sentences to ask that people stop molesting one another, when the translation is not to bother one another.

But, these linguistic nuances are the special effect, the unique style, the cutting edge to the Nobel winning writing style of Hemingway. It is the sentences of Spanglish or otherwise, compounded with his ever seemless simplification, that make this novel resound.

I enjoyed this novel also for its slow beginning and its heightening to a crescendo for its ending. His language and other writing angles seem to mature as the novel progresses. He slowly captures the reader, and has you under his exclusive control the last third of the book.

Although Hemingway makes this a love story at a time of war, parts are seemingly unreal. Knowing that he is going to die the next day, Robert Jordan meets one last time with beautiful Maria. And, as they are about to start doing the deed, he stops and asks if she hurts. I am sure that you can interview many a disagreeing soldier under similar circumstances and ask if the concept of pain to the sexual partner ever entered their mind when they were having what would perhaps be their last moment of heaven on this man's earth - they would all agree that this was not exactly what they had in mind

But, this is a classic and worthy of reading. I waited over 40 years between readings and received very different messages. Each time good.