For Whom the Bell Tolls Review

I feel extremely unqualified to give an opinion on such a prolific author, especially one who I admire so much. But, as this website is about those unqualified opinions, here are my thoughts. This appears to be Hemingway at the peak of his powers. As my interest in him was only reignited this past summer on the docks of Lake Washington, I have yet to get through the latter half of his catalog. But in my eyes For Whom the Bell Tolls is rightly remembered as his pìece de resistance. It is a summation of Hemingway’s prose, content, and style that plucks the best from his more polarizing publications like To Have and Have Not, and builds off of the other works that you already know and love.

I have to admit I enjoyed A Farewell to Arms more in its entirety, but where For Whom the Bell Tolls surpasses my favorite novel is in its visceral storytelling. At times it can make you feel as if you are standing alongside Robert Jordan, boots crunching in the gravel, fighting off Franco’s armies in a Custer-esque last stand under the Spanish sun.