Okay, I didn't love this book. Hemingway's prose strikes me as distant and sparse, and the dialogue was consistently boring to me. And yet- for some reason I sobbed over the ending. I don't know how Hemingway got to me when I didn't think I cared about any of the characters, but somehow, he did. And now, I like the rest of the book in some weird, retroactive way, like I'm giving it credit because of the ending. After reading the ending, the scene where the lovers escape to Switzerland via boat now seems like they are trying to outrun their fate; and looking back to their second meeting, when Tenente says he can see all the moves ahead like a chess game makes the ending seem inevitable and tragic. If either one of them had died on the battlefield, I would've hated this book, but as it is, the fact that they escaped the horrors of war only for Catherine to die in childbirth is so intimate and ironic. I also loved that Tenente muses about how only the very good, or very brave have to worry about dying young. For the rest of us, death is in "no special hurry."
