Ernest Hemingway is an engaging writer who has the skill to easily draw you into the world he describes. I would recommend this novel to anyone who is looking for a first rate yarn. The tale centres round the lives of a group of American expatriates living it up in the Paris of the 1920s after the ravages of the first world war. The group migrates to Pamplona in northern Spain to watch the bullfights and to mix with the toreros. Written by Hemingway in the 1920s the story is very much of its day and includes idioms and slang used by young people at the time as well as casual racist remarks which were the norm in those days. It's really a period piece but well worth reading.

This novel is a loving told tale that takes you through life in Paris as well as, and most importantly, to Spain and the bullfight that takes place there. You feel that Hemingway really understood the places that he was writing about and intending on the reader to picture. The characters etched are complex and not always that endearing. They drift from place to place living and yet impacting upon the lives of those that the come into contact with. The story is of a simpler time and makes you simultaneously desire to be a part of it and yet mindful of the responsibilities of life that mean such a lifestyle is unattainable.

First read this about 35 years ago and was delighted that I enjoyed is as much second time around. Love the sparse, clipped tones of the writing and allowing the reader to work things out for themselves.

There has been a lot of negative press for Hemingway, possibly immediately following his death for his masculine (critics would say macho) themes and other perceived faults. While these are debatable his gifts as a prose stylist cannot be in doubt. He writes wonderful, rhythmic sentences and someone gets away with a level of repetition that would get other writers in trouble. So you know that on opening a Hemingway novel you will always get great writing and that is the case here. We follow a bunch of drunken, aimless drifters from Paris to Spain and back to France as they drink, love and row. Ostensibly the reason for their trip is to visit the Fiesta in Spain and to experience the parades and the bullfighting. They are a mixed bunch, Americans and British but all have been touched by the events of the First World War, something that underpins this novel. The storyl is told from the perspective of Jake, an American reporter working in Paris who has met and fallen for Brett Ashley, an English aristocrat who is beyond his reach, particularly as for much of the time she is conducting indiscreet affairs. He follows her from Paris to Spain as she heads off with her latest lover with the equally smitten Robert Cohn in hot pursuit. They drink excessively and love excessively and at first it seems appallingly self-indulgent. But gradually you realise these are people who have survived a particularly awful war and drink both to forget and to celebrate their survival. I read this as part of a Book Club and a lot of people took against the novel but I enjoyed it and the scenery and lifestyle it painted. These people are not likeable but their adventures are, my only reservation being that we hear far too much about the craft of bullfighting. Hemingway becomes entranced with the whole business and the novel gets lost under the weight of all the technicalities. Hemingway went on to discuss bullfighting in his non-fiction work 'Death in the Afternoon', a much better place to celebrate his gory passion.