I can appreciate Hemingway getting away from the overly-descriptive works that have come before he broke out in his career--pages and pages of descriptions of meadows, skies, trees, houses, etc. He jumps into a little basic info about a character and then there's the dialogue.

I find the dialogue baffling. I mean, some very trivial things are given pages of actual quotations, but could easily be wrapped up in a short paragraph or short broken clusters.

Frankly, the worst thing so far about Hemingway characters is that I could care less about them. They're so bland, like blank slates who never give you a real indication as to what's going on in their head, or what their motivations are.

And this book bored me--all I've seen is how great it is on the back cover blurb, but no hint of the plot. I was looking for a spoiler free plot blurb to see what the heck this book's about and essentially found more "Hemingway's posthumous publication is genius" notes.

Ugh--I can't get into the characters, and I don't care much about the characters. I was annoyed how I got to the fishing trip with young David and the swordfish, which seemed to be promising, so I kept with it past my 100 page barrier. After 30 pages, he's still got the fish on the line and hasn't gotten it in the boat, still fighting. Yes, I know wrestling a thousand-pound fish on the line is hard work, but heavens--how much of it do we readers need to see? And how nonchalant can the adults be that this kid is trying to hang onto this fish and they're drinking a beer or just waiting around for the kiddo to finish.

Ugh, very little to get excited about for me in this one. Hoping his short stories are better (I've got a book of those now).