It does not toll for me I'm afraid.
In September last year I was fortunate enough to take a trip to the Florida Keys. Whilst I was there I visited the house where Ernest Hemingway lived and wrote several of his novels in the nineteen thirties.
As I wandered around the rooms I realised I knew very little about the man other than I was aware of his existence and I certainly had not read any of his novels. I did however feel a sense of history being in the same place that one of the literary greats had once lived. I could almost hear him tapping away on the keys of his typewriter. I was inspired.
Returning to Bahrain I decided to educate myself and read some Hemingway. I bought a copy of For Whom the Bell Tolls.
Now for the difficult bit, and this may be sacrilege for many, but I could not see what the fuss was about. Perhaps I had not picked the ideal Hemingway work to read, perhaps I was not in the mood. Whatever it was, I could not get into the story at all. I found the dialogue flat and unbelievable and the action almost glacial.
Worried that I was out of step with the world somehow, I had a look at some of the reviews on Goodreads. I was not alone. It would seem that there are two camps, those that love this piece and those that hate it. Even die hard Hemingway fans are divided.
For the time being I have given up on reading the book, but I will return to it and try again, from the beginning. I will also try some of his other works.
So what does this say about me and all the other reviewers who didn't like this particular story? It says no one can please all of the people all of the time. It says just because someone is a literary god we won't necessarily like their work. Am I a literary pleb? I don't think so, after all I like much of Shakespeare's work. I just don't find For Whom the Bell Tolls to my taste.
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