Dialogue. That's what I enjoyed most about this novel.
Hemingway's Jake's narration reads like being spoken to. It's a conversation I was, for the most part, happy to let Ernie;s Jake carry. Jake's speech deftly characterizes him. From the way Jake speaks to me- his calm, his manners, and his total willingness to share information with us, I liked him. I also trusted him to tell the story truthfully. When Jake spoke differently to other characters than he had with me, I was a little surprised. To other members of Hemingway's cast, Jake can speak rudely, vulgarly, and dishonestly. That he reserved total manners and honesty for me alone made me like Jake all the more.
Unlike some writers, Hemingway writes his characters to talk differently from one another. Not only does each person speak with different vocabularies (Brett loves to say 'chap' for example, and Jake's word choice is more informal) the characters also speak out of line from the page's, chapter's, or book's subject at hand. They're always ignoring or interrupting one another, advocating for their story, giving the book's dialogue a rich texture.
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