Early Hemmingway in short style in In Our Time

Ernest Hemingway’s In Our Time is a very quick read. It is a short book, made up of even shorter stories, some just a couple pages long. Being so short, there is no long plot to develop, they are each individually more of a simple glance at a moment in time for each character. They are to-the-point and succinct.

There’s one about Nick Adams as a child, witnessing his dad perform a c-section on a woman who’s child is breech. His father successfully does the surgery, but afterwards they find the woman’s husband has killed himself. The narrative is almost curt at times, with little delving into emotion and almost no exploration of motive or reasoning behind the actions. This style of writing pervades in this story and most of the others in this book.

This is the first time I’ve read Hemingway, I’m ashamed to admit, but there are other novels I’ll be reading later. Honestly In Our Time didn’t do it for me. I like short stories, but these were almost too short, and since they are more glimpses at moments and not really a “story” per se, it was hard for me to get any traction into it. Since it is a very early work of Hemingway’s, I look forward to seeing how his style changes over time.