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A review by clay1st
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
5.0
A little vignette into the personalities, struggles and catharses of a loosely tied together gang of expats hanging out in post ww1 Europe. They're tied together by a web of desire that is impossible to resolve harmoniously.
Standing at the center is Brett and Jake's unfulfilled relationship. Little is made explicit here, Jake is impotent (some say even castrated... though there is no evidence of this).
Though Brett, she claims, loves Jake - she has a sexual appetite which Jake cannot fulfil and so being with him romantically is too painful for her to bear. Perhaps I'm being a little naive but I do wonder why, given the rest of Jake's body works fine, it's little unclear why they could not at least give it a go... I guess Brett's operating on an all-or-nothing principal here. Instead she bounces between loveless marriages and passionate affairs.
Jake, conspicuously, does not seem to think much about his sexual impediment, only referring it to on a couple of occasions with utterly indifferent resignation - an attitude that perfectly matches his persona of 'wise' cynicism. Is he bluffing? if he's not, where is his anger and sadness?
The dangerous diplomatic web formed between our band of ex-pats grows gradually more fragile, but remains sustained by an almost bewildering carefreeness, as if something so huge is still looming in the recent past that any of life's ordinary tragedies seem trivial.
Apparently this book is also semiautobiographical (minus the impotence?).
Standing at the center is Brett and Jake's unfulfilled relationship. Little is made explicit here, Jake is impotent (some say even castrated... though there is no evidence of this).
Though Brett, she claims, loves Jake - she has a sexual appetite which Jake cannot fulfil and so being with him romantically is too painful for her to bear. Perhaps I'm being a little naive but I do wonder why, given the rest of Jake's body works fine, it's little unclear why they could not at least give it a go... I guess Brett's operating on an all-or-nothing principal here. Instead she bounces between loveless marriages and passionate affairs.
Jake, conspicuously, does not seem to think much about his sexual impediment, only referring it to on a couple of occasions with utterly indifferent resignation - an attitude that perfectly matches his persona of 'wise' cynicism. Is he bluffing? if he's not, where is his anger and sadness?
The dangerous diplomatic web formed between our band of ex-pats grows gradually more fragile, but remains sustained by an almost bewildering carefreeness, as if something so huge is still looming in the recent past that any of life's ordinary tragedies seem trivial.
Apparently this book is also semiautobiographical (minus the impotence?).