The Sun Also Rises

Our meeting at Sandy's was cozy, as we enjoyed wine, appetizers and treats beside her tall and refreshingly simply adorned Doug Fir Christmas Tree. It was a sweet respite from the busyness of our lives and as always satisfying to share good food, beverages and conversation with fellow readers and friends.

The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway was not well received by most of us, for the repetitiveness of the plot and the insensitivity of the characters.   Set in Paris, and then Spain, the story follows the everyday life of a group of American and English expats living in Paris shortly after WWI.  They eat, drink and travel together to fish and go to the bullfights.  Their callousness is typified by this description given to the narrator Jake -
"You're an expatriate. You've lost touch with the soil.  Fake European standards have ruined you. You drink yourself to death. You become obsessed with sex. You spend all your time talking, not working. You are an expatriate, see?  You hang around cafes. " 

Several mentioned that the most enjoyable and interesting part of the book was the description of the travel to Spain from Paris. One could easily imagine being on the crowded bus that took them through the many twists and climbs in the Basque country.
" Now as we went higher there was a wind blowing the grain. The road was white and dusty, and the dust rose under the wheels and hung in the air behind us.  The road climbed up into the hills and left the rich grain-fields below. Now there were only patches of grain on the bare hillsides and on each side of the water courses" . Hemingway's description of the terrain and the people they encountered carried the reader along for journey vicariously. 

I  often found myself imagining scenes beyond what was written, which  apparently was the intent of Hemingway's spare style of writing.   "The Iceberg Theory is a style of writing coined by American writer Ernest Hemingway. When he became a writer of short stories, he retained this minimalistic style , focusing on surface elements without explicitly discussing underlying themes." - google search    

Our next book is The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu , by Joshua Hammer.  We will meet at Claudia's home on Wednesday, Jan. 3 at 5:30 PM.