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Title: the emperor has no clothes
Review: Someone has to say it, the supposed emperor has no clothes. hemingway was known to be a legend in his own mind and apparently attracted a cult following. for me, this book was a terrible disappointment; i feel cheated by the author's reputation, which seems undeserved. it's sad if the arbiters of quality in American literature view Hemingway as some kind of icon. i voraciously read more books than i can ever count, starting out as a literature major in college and now it's 40 years later. for whom the bell tolls is mind numbing for the most part with a plot that barely moves, does not stimulate the imagination, and makes a rather ordinary point overall. the dialog is mostly rather odd, shallow and unrevealing. Except for the character of Pilar, who vividly and viscerally recounts instances of the brutality of man against man (and woman and animal, especially during con flict, the other characters are not well developed. I cannot recommend this book at all.
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