Rating: 4 out of 5
Its a simple plot: a story of an seasoned fisherman from near Havana who hooks a big fish one morning and and takes a 3 day journey in an attempt to reel it in. Hemingway writes with impossible consistency and understate skill. It must have taken a great mind and a lot of research to make that fisherman, and yet I think that Hemingway would have starved the man to death just to keep me reading. If he had it would have worked; because I felt the possibility, it did it's job well. Hemingway's story in all aspects should have been foreign to me, the place, situation and emotions he described I could not have related to a week ago, but the story wove around me and my senses what became a perfect book experience.
I feel I should explain that the reason I rated it at a 4 is because it's missing in subject and story things that I naturally relate to and enjoy. My favorite books are the ones that take me where I--sometimes unwittingly--want to be. He made me care about something I never would have given a thought to before, but in the end, it wasn't a favorite book for me (someday I'll have to make a short blog listing my favorite books, but I'm afraid to do that since it would make me review whys and how many's... another day perhaps).
I loved this book and in the reading learned that there are a million subtleties to writing. I told you I wasn't a book expert--until this week, I have never so much as checked this book out of the library--but today I learned that there's a reason The Old Man and the Sea earned a Pulitzer prize and Ernest Hemingway received a Nobel for masterful narratives. For what it's worth, I second the votes.
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