Ernest Hemingway’s novel The Sun Also Rises is not a brilliant novel.  Sometimes it wanders and seems less focused.  Other times the dialogue and the description of the scenery is beautiful and masterful.  I have read this novel twice and each time I wondered how a writer can write so sparingly and yet tell such complicated stories.  Every word matters.  Furthermore, Hemingway mixes in complex characters.  Jake Barnes and his friends are shallow, witty, sensitive, callous, caring, and wonderfully flawed, which make them fascinating for the reader.

This novel didn’t wow me.  I didn’t pause after every sentence and think, “How beautiful.”  And yet I loved this book.  I enjoy Hemingway’s sentence structure.  I cherish the deception of his writing.  A few words can say so much.