After the disappointment that was The Sun Also Rises, I felt obliged to read another Hemingway novel, a later one, to see what I thought. To that end, I finished his 1952 novella The Old Man and the Sea. This was written 26 years after TSAR, won the Pulitzer Prize, and was apparently a significant factor (insofar as showing a later career resurgence) in his being awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1954. So what did I think?
This was a much better book. 4.5 stars out of 5. It had a point, and while there were only two characters in it, they were both way more fully developed in only 129 pages than anyone in TSAR was in 250. While the themes here may have been Hemingway revisiting well-travelled ground (man against nature, man against himself, with all the macho accoutrements for which he is famous), they were so well executed that I have no issue with the familiarness.
A great little book, which along with some of his excellent short stories, renew my faith in him as a writer.
Books read in 2010: 7 (totalling 1463 pages)
New authors: 5
Books from 2010: 1 (I should have been counting Coetzee's book here for first US release)
Classics read: 3
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