There is nothing about this book that I enjoyed. All of the main characters (save maybe the young bull fighter) were just horrible people. I started out just not liking Robert Cohn, as how pathetic the others call him really does show through his actions. But in the end, I wouldn't say he ended up being who I liked the most, but who I disliked the least. He was still a pitiful person, but when he ended up fighting and knocking out some of the other miserable characters I did feel like he gave them what they deserved.

The thing is I am not even able to get satisfaction out of disliking these characters, because from what I understand this is all based on real events and therefore subject to severe bias. The book feels like Hemingway just trashing on all his friends, maybe some is well-founded, but I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of it is exaggeration.

I think if you took all of the lines which referenced searching for drinks, drinking, and just being drunk you'd end up looking at a sizeable chunk of the book. I mean it does the job of hitting the point home that these are a bunch of alcoholics, but at a certain point it becomes overkill. It adds nothing to the narrative, it is like reading the same thing over and over again, and could definitely been woven into the story much better. Every time a character drank Hemingway made sure to record the whole long, drawn out process, which becomes quickly boring given how each repetitive time provides the reader nothing else other than a reminder that they are all a bunch of drunks. It wasn't a matter of disgust or disapproval that made this stand out negatively to me, it was just how mind-numbing and boring it was.

As if that was not enough though, I have never seen more repetitive dialogue in a book ever before. There are several cases where a character will go on in a manner similar to "So-and-so is such a swell guy. Aren't they just so swell? Wow what a swell person. Hey, do you also think so-and-so is swell? That is one swell person right there." So many times this happens, someone expressing the exact same opinion or observation over and over and over.

At least it was a simple read. I would definitely be much more upset if this had commanded more attention to detail while still providing nothing but overwhelming disappointment in return.