An American newspaper man in Paris loves a woman he cannot have, and follows her and their friends to a bullfighting fiesta in Spain.
A short-sentenced, drink-soaked novel that rewards patience: the plot is thin, but the ache underneath it is not. The period language about race and religion is hard to read, and the characters are often unkind. In my view, it earns four out of five for the last page alone.
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A full-spoiler The Sun Also Rises summary built from a name count: Brett 430, Bill 335, Mike 251, Cohn 228, Jake 122, Romero 113. Plot, the Pamplona fiesta and the last line, counted from the Project Gutenberg text.
The Sun Also Rises is a 1926 novel by Ernest Hemingway about Jake Barnes, Lady Brett Ashley and their friends in Paris and at the Pamplona fiesta. We read the text of Project Gutenberg ebook 67138, released January 10, 2022, which carries the Charles Scribner’s Sons 1926 title page.
Below you’ll find a summary built from a name count: how often the book names Brett, Bill, Mike, Cohn, Jake, Romero and Montoya, book by book, and what that says about who the story is really about. The page has full spoilers, ending included.
A short-sentenced, drink-soaked novel that rewards patience: the plot is thin, but the ache underneath it is not. The period language about race and religion is hard to read, and the characters are often unkind. In my view, it earns four out of five for the last page alone. Read it if: you want the classic novel about a lost generation in the 1920s; you like spare prose where the feeling is in what goes unsaid; you are studying it for class and need the plot and the ending; you enjoy love stories that do not get a happy ending. Skip it if: you need a fast plot: much of the book is cafes, trains and fishing; you dislike books with heavy drinking and unkind characters; the period language about race and religion will stop you reading.
A full-spoiler The Sun Also Rises summary built from a name count: Brett 430, Bill 335, Mike 251, Cohn 228, Jake 122, Romero 113. Plot, the Pamplona fiesta and the last line, counted from the Project Gutenberg text. The Sun Also Rises Summary: Counting Every Name →
Hemingway's 1926 novel follows Jake Barnes, an American newspaper man in Paris, who loves Lady Brett Ashley but is kept from her by a war wound. The group travels to the fiesta at Pamplona, where Brett leaves with a nineteen-year-old bullfighter, Pedro Romero. Jake ends up bringing her back from Madrid.
Brett wires Jake from Madrid that she is in trouble. He finds that she has sent Romero away and plans to go back to Mike. In a taxi she says they could have had such a damned good time together, and Jake answers, "Isn't it pretty to think so?" In our reading, that reply admits the wish and refuses it in the same breath.
Jake Barnes, who calls himself I. By our count of the Project Gutenberg text, other characters name him only 122 times, while Brett is named 430 times, Bill 335, Mike 251 and Robert Cohn 228.
