For Whom the Bell Tolls

New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 99, 16 May 1941, Page 5

For Whom the Bell Tolls

SUPPOSE most people know that Ernest Hemingway is regarded as one of the best novelists writing to-day, To tell the truth I had grown a little tired and suspicious of him until I read the other day his latest novel For Whom The Bell Tolls, but from the beginning to the end of this book I was under the spell of his style and now I am satisfied that there are few living novelists who could write such a moving and significant tale as this is. The story of For Whom The Bell Tolls is a story of Spain during the recent war. It is the story of an American who is ordered to blow up a bridge in order to prevent reinforcements from being sent by the enemy at a time when the Government troops are preparing to launch an offensive. In order to carry out his task, which means almost certain death, the American, Robert Jordan, passes through the enemy lines and joins a guerilla band operating in the mountains. The story is the story of his few days of life with the members of the guerilla band before he succeeds in blowing up the bridge. But to indicate the theme is to do little in indicating the importance of the novel. In none of Hemingway’s books, not even in the most popular Farewell to Arms, is there such a sureness of touch in characterisation, such moving and intimate scenes of a man and a woman in love, such sympathetic understanding of a wide variety of human beings. I can think of no novel which deals so well with all the different aspects of a cruel civil war. Much that Hemingway has to say through his characters of the details and personalities of the Spanish conflict will no doubt be furiously challenged, but this cannot, in my opinion, prevent his book from being regarded as the greatest literary work which has arisen from the suffering and humiliation of the Spanish people. My ‘recommendation is that whatever books you may be forced to neglect, make a determined effort to read this latest work of the well-known American novelist.-(Book Review, by Winston Rhodes, 3YA, April .29.)