diabalotia 's review for:

For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway

5.0

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I love Hemingway's writing style so much, it's so clear and doesn't ever have to muddy the waters with "so-and-so felt this or that". His show-don't-tell technique is the most extreme, very subtle when it sows emotion and motivation. Just an absolute joy to read and so moreish. I'm living in Madrid at the moment - trying somewhat unsuccessfully to improve my Spanish - and the novel is actually set in the Sierra where I go to work most days. It was amazing to recognise so much of the geography and the nearby towns that the guerrilla operations take place in. I have only read The Old Man and the Sea so far from Hemingway, but I was delighted by how much Castilian shows up throughout the book. Not only through the dialogue (which is transliterated very simply from the Spanish, with idioms and grammar kept intact), but also it bleeds through into the body of the text: the narration and the description. It makes for very unique reading and is a style I appreciate very much. I read For All The Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy a few years ago and it carries a similar amount of Spanish dialogue which I really appreciated at the time, but the text wasn't as effected by the language.