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Title: A shadow of a novel
Review: I didn't like this. I found much of it pointless and unnecessary. It was essentially the hero's encounter with the girl he loves but can't have (vintage Hemingway fare), where they rattle on about the Italian war (or is it WWII?) and bemoan their fate several times.Nothing much happens; there was no climax, no plot movement. The dialogue is plodding and unrealistic to the point of disbelief. In this I was especially disappointed, given Hemingway's usual skill with dialogue. It seems like a shadow of a novel. The kind of novel a tired, old man would sit down and write, a story not *about* the war but a story about a man looking back and talking about the war, in a very long-winded and obscure fashion to boot. It had no life or vitality to it ... and this lack seemed to reflect as much from the author as from the book itself.
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