Okay, I knew nothing at all about this book before I started.
(It is my fourth Hemingway, so I did know it was going to be a man's book of sorts.)
And honestly, if someone had said to me - it is about trout fishing, getting 'tight' (drunk), fighting, and the bullfights in Spain - I would have probably passed it by with nary a thought. Or at least moved it to the very bottom of my to read list.
I loved this book.
I loved every word of this book.
I am quite a Hemingway girl at this point.
I can't explain it, because the components of the book do not seem appealing when they are typed out like that - booze, fighting, fishing, bullfights. And I do not gravitate toward men nor their stories. But there you are, I loved it.
My first Hemingway (was my least favorite Hemingway, but still a very good book) was Farewell to Arms. I was going to say Farewell to Arms was an earlier book (1929) and he was just getting started, but it was actually written after The Sun Also Rises (1926). If you are trying to remember, my other Hemingway reads were For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), and The Old Man and the Sea (1951).
The Sun Also Rises version I listened to was read by William Hurt (2006). He was most excellent. And I wondered if they chose him because of his The Big Chill (1983) character/Nick who was (character in The Sun Also Rises was too) impotent from a war injury. I caught that immediately. His voice and reading style were extremely well matched to the book.
It ended all too soon.
Here is the link to the SparkNotes Context section for this book. It does a good job of explaining the key points of Hemingway's life and when the books/Pulitzer/Nobel fit into this time frame.
One thing missing from the context section is his children. Hemingway was married four times. His three sons came from his first two marriages. The three granddaughters that we know (Joan, Margot, Mariel) all came from his oldest son, John, who married Byra. Here is a family tree that lists the other two sons and the rest of his grand kids.
