A review by sashas_books
To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway

adventurous dark tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No

2.5

 A book club pick ;) 

The only Hemingway I’ve ever read was The Old Man and the Sea, and as a school assignment besides. So I voted yes with enthusiasm when my book club suggested we read this one. 

I enjoyed the writing from the start. The descriptions of fishing were magnificent. And yet, why would you fight a beautiful creature of the sea, just so that you may win and it may die? 

The dialogues are alive, rich and colourful, you can taste them. 

“What happened to your arm?” the lawyer asked Harry. Harry has the sleeve pinned up to the shoulder. 

“I didn’t like the look of it so I cut it off,” Harry told him. 

I liked how Hemingway lets you catch glimpses of a different time and place, with a word here, or just a hint of a scent, a colour there. 

Despite all this, I felt annoyed and bored. The women were mostly very silly and ridiculous. In general, there was a lot of “of its time” stuff in here, and I am still not sure how I felt about that. Also, I have seen this story before; I’ve met all these people before, in various reincarnations, in other books. Had this very short novel been better constructed, I would have been willing to overlook this. The POV changes and jumps between first and third person jarred, I felt. The cacophony of characters by the end added nothing to the narrative and just felt chaotic. They were not people, either, they were more like bugs under a magnifying glass – watch them crawl, oh, look, they picked up a piece of shit and are eating it, such weird bugs. I mostly just wanted the book to be over. 

P.S. There might be better Hemingways out there. Recommendations, anyone?