A Farewell to Arms

My favorite of Hemingway’s books, this great anti-war novel about a passionate love affair between a young, wounded soldier and the beautiful nurse who cares for him, never loses its power for me despite repeated readings.

I admire not only the book’s lyrical writing, exquisite observations and heartbreaking story, but also how the horror of what men are experiencing on the battlefield is mirrored in the tragedy of Catherine’s death in childbirth.

No writer of fiction can afford to ignore Hemingway’s spare, disciplined prose, and I have been studying him since I began to write as a kid. “No writer makes us feel more alive,” wrote the critic Alfred Kazin of Hemngway, and to read him is an emotional awakening. A Farewell to Arms, which is set in Italy in World War I, is one of the world’s great love stories. 

Italy invites forbidden love. In A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway’s 1929 masterpiece, it is between American ambulance driver Frederic Henry and  British nurse Catherine Barkley. Set during World War I, Henry is wounded and sent to a hospital in Milan, where he and Barkley begin a passionate affair. Henry is, again, called back to the front and then deserts to find Catherine. His plan is that they will escape through the Alps to Switzerland, leaving the horror of war behind. I have been to the north of Italy many times, especially Stresa on Lago Maggiore and often imagine… show more.

A Farewell to Arms is a great read, even today. Dialogue is Hemingway’s strength and the story of two star-crossed lovers who experience an out-of-wedlock pregnancy and ends in tragedy puts the reader right in the middle of the war. Lt Fredric Henry is an American who enlists in the Italian army as a Red Cross ambulance driver before the US formally entered the war. Nurse Catharine Barkley is a British nurse he falls in love with. Published in 1928, this novel deals with taboo subjects for that time in history (such as unwed pregnancy) and desertion, so certain parts… show more.