In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway

In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway

Publisher: Scribner (2002)

160 pages, eBook (Purchased Myself for $9.08)

Book Rating: 5 Stars

Content Ratings:

Violence: Mild-Moderate-Brutal

Swearing: Clean-Light-Filthy

Sexual Content: White-Pink-Red

Summary:

This is a collection of 15 short stories (childhood memories, bull-fighting stories, and others) intermixed with war remembrances, and it gives the collection as a whole an intriguing chaotic feel, as those you are moving indiscriminately between memories from home (pleasant and unpleasant) and war happenings.

My Thoughts:

I really enjoyed this collection of short stories. I wasn’t sure what to expect—never having read Hemingway before—but I really liked his blunt, gritty style of writing. He didn’t skim over or wallow in unpleasant things, he just moved through it as though it’s simple beauty was as worthy of enjoyment as any other event. My favorites stories from this collection were some of the ones featuring Nick Adams: Indian Camp (young Nick accompanying his father to help a woman in labor), The Three-Day Blow (Nick hanging out with his friend Bill) and Big Two-Hearted River (Nick camping and fly-fishing). Not all of the stories feature Nick, and the ones that do are intermixed liberally with the ones that don’t. Great collection.

1. On the Quai at Smyrna
2. Indian Camp
3. The Doctor and the Doctor’s Wife
4. The End of Something
5. The Three-Day Blow
6. The Battler
7. A Very Short Story
8. Soldier’s Home
9. The Revolutionist
10. Mr. and Mrs. Elliot
11. Cat in the Rain
12. Out of Season
13. Cross-Country Snow
14. My Old Man
15. Big Two-Hearted River

Edition Notes:

Great ebook edition with easy maneuverability between stories.

Quotes:

“In the early morning on the lake sitting in the stern of the boat with his father rowing, he felt quite sure that he would never die.” -Ernest Hemingway, In Our Time, Indian Camp

“It was absolutely topping. They tried to get over it, and we potted them from forty yards.” -Ernest Hemingway, In Our Time, Chapter IV

“He says opening bottles is what makes drunkards—He had never thought of that before. He had always thought it was solitary drinking that made drunkards.” -Ernest Hemingway, In Our Time, The Three-Day Blow

“All of a sudden everything was over—I don’t know why it was. I couldn’t help it. Just like when the three-day blows come now and rip all the leaves off the trees.” -Ernest Hemingway, In Our Time, The Three-Day Blow

“The major did not marry her in the spring, or any other time. Luz never got an answer to the letter to Chicago about it. A short time after he contracted gonorrhea from a sales girl in a loop department store while riding in a taxicab through Lincoln Park.” -Ernest Hemingway, In Our Time, A Very Short Story

“Later he felt the need to talk but no one wanted to hear about it. His town had heard too many atrocity stories to be thrilled by actualities. Krebs found that to be listened to at all he had to lie, and after he had done this twice he, too, had a reaction against the war and against talking about it. A distaste for everything that had happened to him in the war set in because of the lies he had told.” -Ernest Hemingway, In Our Time, Soldier’s Home

“He did not want any consequences. He did not want any consequences ever again. He wanted to live along without consequences.” -Ernest Hemingway, In Our Time, Soldier’s Home

“When you were really ripe for a girl you always got one. You did not have to think about it. Sooner or later it would come. He had learned that in the army.” -Ernest Hemingway, In Our Time, Soldier’s Home