Reviews with content warning for Alcoholism - A Farewell to Arms

Don't take anything I've written here seriously.
Between 2.5 and 3. I'm pretty traumatized by this book. It's so dark and heavy. The last chapter was good because the writing finally clicked with me. I managed to relate to Frederic's suffering.
I didn't like most of the book because of multiple reasons. Firstly, I didn't care about the war. The main character worked as an ambulance driver on the Italian Front, and he told his side of the story during WWI. He was just a random guy, who drank a lot to suppress the horrors of war. Later on, he suffered a major injury to his legs and had to spend time in the hospital. After his legs were mostly healed, he was forced to go back to the front, which he didn't want to do. Understandable. Secondly, the whole romance was weird from the beginning. Catherine has a funny way of talking and she's such an insecure, submissive woman. It was tedious to read about Frederic and Catherine. Catherine's colleague nurse Ferguson is even worse. She seemed normal in the first half of the book but later, the scene where Frederic, Catherine, and Ferguson are in a restaurant happens. Ferguson's behavior was irrational and unnecessary. I think Hemingway really knew how to accentuate the "feminine" traits into absurdity.
Reading this book felt like watching a pointless war movie that was longer than it should have been. In the end, the course of the story completely changes because of Frederic's actions. That's where the story was slightly more interesting. It almost seemed like a slice-of-life story about a man and his pregnant wife living peacefully in the mountains. But alas, it had to be ruined for the sake of even further trauma. I heard that there were alternate endings to this book because Hemingway didn't know how to end the story. I think that only shows that maybe he should have written a different book. I don't want to come off as mean or rude. Is it too late to say that?
A Farewell to Arms is such a weird little book. Is it supposed to show the mundane terror of war? -Yes. Does it want to show a slow progression of a war-torn relationship between two random people? - Also yes. Except it was the most uninteresting, uninspiring story, with extremely dry simplistic writing. Although I have to give Hemingway props for that one sentence that spans a whole paragraph, where he talks about taking Catherine to Milan. I love a good long sentence. Also, he didn't seem to know where to put commas. Me too, Hem, me too.

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adventurous dark reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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