This is a hard book to review, and it very much depends what things I'm keeping in mind. I'm not gonna change my rating system just because of this infuriating, iconic, beautiful, boring-at-times book, though.

This book is a masterpiece, just not one that I enjoyed reading. It was terribly honest; I learned a lot; there were moments where Hemingway said something so stunning I just sat there for a minute taking it in. But for the most part, the prose was hard to get through and nothing much happened.

Going back to honesty: Besides my own enjoyment, the thing I hold up the most for judging art is honesty. When an artist is honest about their experience and/or the world, I appreciate the work. This book is one of the most honest books I've read about war, and for that I respect it. But war is hard and painful and boring when not romanticized, and this book is too. He wanted to accurately portray antifascist guerrilla fighters in the mountains of Spain, and he did. So shout-out to Ernest for not romanticizing it or making war any more exciting than it is, and creating a not-as-good book because of that. (Another thing that was honest but made the book less enjoyable was how they talked about women. It was culturally accurate and familiar, but very painful.)

Anyone trying to read this should read it along with Wai Chee Dimock's Yale Course's series; I don't know what I would have done without this perspective. (I would recommend watching the Introduction and then the four videos on this book.)