For Whom the Bell Tolls

Wowowowowowow!  

This book was phenomenal--nuanced and graceful, understated and economical and yet full of meaning.  

My husband was reading this and suggested I give it a go since we both like Hemingway's style.  

For Whom the Bell Tolls is about an American fighting in Spain's civil war.  I was a little hesitant to pick it up because it is a war novel and usually those are not my favorite.  They certainly aren't light fare and I wasn't sure after a year reading Shogun and David Copperfield that I wanted more depth.  But I'm so glad I read it now.

reading in a comfy chair at the library is my fave.  

I was recently thinking about how reading books at different points in your life make you focus on different characters and situations.  In this book there are two main couples:  Pablo and Pilar and Robert and Maria.  While Robert is the main character and voice of the novel, Pablo and Pilar caught my attention.  They had been together for years and they spoke to each other in ways that reminded me of me and my husband.  There was so much subtle humor and feeling and intelligence from Pablo and Pilar that I think I would have missed if I read it in college.  

These thoughts made me consider how different I would view so many books that I loved as a younger reader.  And it definitely points me in the direction of rereading some of those books and rethinking some of my prior conclusions...

In this book the idea of language is central.  At times, it seems that Hemingway translated the dialogue from Spanish to English.  He uses the formal thee or thou to show respect (or mock respect). 

There were some moments of great insight into unusual things for a war novel like hospitality and ugliness and beauty.  There were some parts that made me laugh out loud.  Of course, because it is Hemingway, there were many references to drinking and of course absinthe made a few appearances as well.  

I've heard Austen novels compared to the movements in a waltz.  For Whom the Bell Tolls also felt like a dance with repetitive motions and a well designed plot.  The end came fully around to the beginning.  

To be honest, at the beginning I wasn't sure I would relate much to this book about a young solider falling in love for the first time and trying to blow up a bridge.  But, there were many moments that resonated with me.  One beautiful moment, when Robert is getting ready to begin the attack, there is this reflection that perfectly captures the pressure that I often feel as a mom of four kids:

"This was the greatest gift that he had, the talent that fitted him for war; that ability not to ignore but to despise whatever bad ending there could be.  This quality was destroyed by too much responsibility for others or the necessity of undertaking something ill planned or badly conceived.  For in such things the bad ending, failure, could not be ignored.  It was not simply a possibility of harm to one's self, which could be ignored."

When I didn't have the responsibility of kids I could live a bit more recklessly and I didn't worry about failure.  With kids, I feel the gravity of their futures and I don't want to mess that up.  And it's stressful.  But worth it.  

If you're looking for a great book to end the year with, this is it.