by Ernest Hemingway, posthumously 1986
What a strange book! It was the September 2022 selection for the Classic Book Club. I gave it to Mom to read first and asked her if she wanted to go to this book club and discuss it. She at first said yes, but then she said no. I finally read it weeks afterward and I hope she has forgotten it. I wouldn’t have given it to her to read if I’d read it first.
A beautiful young couple go to the south of France for their honeymoon. They eat good food, drink (a lot), ride their bikes, swim in the beautiful sea, make love. It’s paradise until Catherine tells David she has a surprise. Enter the wierdness. She goes to town and gets her hair cut like a boy. She asks him if she can “change.” He can tell she needs it so reluctantly agrees. Nothing is spelled out, but something deeply disturbing to David happens, and Catherine apologizes, but wants it again. And then, Catherine brings home another woman. This one is just as beautiful as she is. Her name is Marita and both Catherine and David fall in love with her. David is a writer. In the midst of all this drinking and sex, he is writing a story. It is a story of he and his father and Juma in Africa hunting an old bull elephant. It really happened and David works hard to get everything right. He allows Marita to read it because she has read his other books and loves his writing. Marita secretly allows Catherine to read it and Catherine hates it and burns it up completely. She tells David and explains she had to do it. He tells her he wishes he had never met her. He’s afraid he’s going to kill her. He and Marita go for a drive. While they are gone, Catherine gets on a train for Paris. The book ends with David and Marita in love and David going through one awful day trying to write and only being able to get one sentence down over and over. But then, after a day without Catherine and her madness, and a day and a night with Marita, he is able to begin re-writing the story, even better this time.
He started writing this in 1946 (wikipedia) and worked on it for 15 years until his death. I guess it was like 700 pages long. It was published 25 years after his death (he died in 1961). It is only 247 pages. It is a good book but disturbing. Catherine’s madness destroys paradise. He didn’t want any of the wierdness but she would not take no for an answer. His pet name for her is “Devil.” It mirrors the stereotype of Eve tempting Adam in the Garden of Eden and sin entering paradise.