The Sun Also Rises
Decide its fate
The record
Time
An eveningA season249 pages, about 5 hours: four-fifths the length of a typical book on the shelf.
Getting in
Walk right inSteep climbOne reader finds the opening slow through the Paris chapters, picking up once the group crosses into Spain for the fiesta.
What it gives
Plot and actionIdeas to live byIn 19 reviews from critics and book blogs, 5 credit the plot and 9 credit the ideas or a change in how they live.
One of a kind
Others do thisNothing else doesTwo readers suggest shorter shelf substitutes: The Great Gatsby at 180 pages and The Catcher in the Rye at 240 pages.
The case for it
on the fiesta and bullfight
“On the face of it, he has simply gathered, almost at random, a group of American and British expatriates from Paris, conducted them on a fishing expedition, and exhibited them against the background of a wild Spanish fiesta and bull-fight. The characters are concisely indicated.”
Unsigned review · The New York Times, 31 October 1926 on the prose style
“Hemingway’s prose is as sharp and unadorned as the bleached bones of a dead bull.”
a Substack review on the fishing trip
“trout fishing in the Irati River in the mountains near Burguette”
a Substack review on Jake and Brett
“the bullfighting scenes in particular, the tragic relationship between Jake Barnes and Lady Brett Ashley”
a Substack review
The case against
on the iceberg theory
“Hemingway’s ‘iceberg theory’ should be called the ‘skirt theory’.”
a book blog on the toneless passages
“many more passages are toneless, tedious, or otherwise lack the finesse of his later work.”
a Substack review on the plot
“The plot meanders a lot. If you’re looking for a tightly structured narrative”
a book blog on the length
“it offers nothing that Hemingway couldn’t have accomplished in a much shorter piece.”
a book blog
