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A review by twilliamson
To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway
4.0
It may not be Hemingway's finest novel, but it is certainly a powerful one, and those giving the book low ratings or unfavorable reviews seem to stand out as not having really understood the premise of the book in the first place. It's powerfully written, and while the narrative comes up feeling a bit aimless in the last portion of the novel, this one doesn't seem to ever have been about plot as much as it is about characters and their human feelings.
And so while the plot ostensibly breaks down in the last third of the novel, it's also the space in which the human characters emerge most completely. Mixed in with the death of the protagonist, Harry Morgan, is a treatise on the lives of so many other minor characters; in one particular chapter, for example, Hemingway describes the lives and emotions of the occupants of a yacht club, contrasting their lived experiences starkly with those thoughts and fears and pains of the other characters of the novel, like Morgan's wife Marie. Because Hemingway is willing to do away for a moment with the very pulp-like plot and zoom in on character emotions, he's able to do something that literature needs to do in making a statement. The book is poignantly relatable to today, even in the same moments it is undoubtedly a memoir of the past.
Either way, it's a fantastic book, and while it won't top my lists of classic literature or even of the best books of the year, it's still memorable for the way it builds characters and demonstrates the conflicts of trying to live from day to day in a menacing world full of uncertainty and hunger.
And so while the plot ostensibly breaks down in the last third of the novel, it's also the space in which the human characters emerge most completely. Mixed in with the death of the protagonist, Harry Morgan, is a treatise on the lives of so many other minor characters; in one particular chapter, for example, Hemingway describes the lives and emotions of the occupants of a yacht club, contrasting their lived experiences starkly with those thoughts and fears and pains of the other characters of the novel, like Morgan's wife Marie. Because Hemingway is willing to do away for a moment with the very pulp-like plot and zoom in on character emotions, he's able to do something that literature needs to do in making a statement. The book is poignantly relatable to today, even in the same moments it is undoubtedly a memoir of the past.
Either way, it's a fantastic book, and while it won't top my lists of classic literature or even of the best books of the year, it's still memorable for the way it builds characters and demonstrates the conflicts of trying to live from day to day in a menacing world full of uncertainty and hunger.