I think the appeal to this book is that it captures certain places and cultures in
time. The story isn't very remarkable, or even existent at times. A great portion
of this book is taken up with painstaking descriptions of the scenes and settings.
These chunks put me in a good mindset, it was like a mental vacation. The rest of
the book is the interactions of the characters, most of whom by themselves weren't
very interesting but things always got more interesting the more of them were
present in each scene. The main character is extremely dull, understandably I think
because of his impotence. He hardly seems to have a pulse and the whole novel he,
as the narrator, seems sedated. Thank heavens for Bill, my savior in this book. The
only bits of dialogue that were remotely stimulating for me were when Bill had
something to say, in addition to a couple times Mike was being an ass. Hemingway
can clearly write entertaining dialogue but seems to prefer not to. Overall I
didn't get much from this book but enjoyed it for the few interesting character
relationships and the scenery. I also liked the concept of the four men on vacation
with a woman, they all have some level of feelings for her and different types of
relationships with her. For me that was the center point of the plot. It was kind
of sad but felt like a true interpretation of that situation for any man who's
experienced vying for a woman's attention with a friend or friendly acquaintance.
For me it was the focal point of the plot and yet it was such a small fragment of
the book.
The narrator of the audiobook did a great job of reading the different characters
so they had distinct and believable voices. Unfortunately he reads painfully
slowly. I ended up speeding up the audio quite a bit in VLC media player to keep my
attention. Between each word he likes give you enough time to have a proper chance
at forgetting what the last word was.
