Customer Reviews

In Our Time (The Scribner Library Contemporary Classics)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a book of short stories including Soldier's Home, The Battler, and The End of Something. They can be read and re-read and, despite a style of which the simplicity and spareness is merely apparent, provide a richer experience upon each re-read. They are a nice introduction to the works of Hemingway.

The themes of the stories are generally somber, painful, and full of loss. Not only in terms of content, but in style, Hemingway conveys a detached and painful experience--and the ability to convey pain in not only what is described, but what the author finds too painful to describe directly. The stories, which may seem spare to some contemporary readers, are also noteworthy in displaying that literary style Malcolm Cowley called The Middle American Prose Style--simple Anglo Saxon words, action, and repetition of certain words for effect.

Some stories also have an autobiographical tone such as "Indian Camp", describing growing up with his father, a doctor, who eventually committed suicide. Other stories (The Battler) continue the Nick Adams line of stories, while others (The Elliots), describe, somewhat cynically the dilettantes among the ex patriots after the war. The story "Soldier's Home" is particularly notable, and tells the story of a young man, whom we would now recognize as suffering some effects of PTSD, coming home from France after the armistice, changed, detached, a puzzle to his parents, wanting to interact but lacking the motivation, and estranged from the past simpleness of his former small town life. Damon G. LaBarbera, PhD

This book arrived within the delivery time, but in relation to my needs it arrived a few days later than I had hoped. However, the transaction was smooth and the book was in GREAT condition! All in all I was happy!