Ranking Ernest Hemingway’s Top 4 Novels

When I think of Ernest Hemingway’s writings as a whole, the word that comes to mind is “honest.” He mastered a style that was truly distinct. He would edit his works and strip out everything he thought was embellishment or superfluous. The sparser the sentence, the truer it was, and the more the reader could feel its truth. He knew what to include and what to leave out of the narrative, engaging the reader’s imagination to feel in the blanks while the story still remained his own creation, which is a powerful effect. His avoidance of flowery language and his direct prose in combination with the hard-hitting topics he explores, like war and its aftermath, culminates into that sense of honesty. 

I’ve read that other readers find Hemingway accessible and easy to read because of his direct prose, and while his prose may be technically easy to consume, I find myself reading the same passage multiple times to ensure I didn’t miss a subtext. I feel like I could reread his novels multiple times and find something new each time.

Sometimes I do wonder if I give Hemingway too many allowances since he is such a celebrated author, but ultimately, I think there is a lot to learn from his writing style, and I can’t deny a certain awe of the way Hemingway writes so sparingly but somehow manages to pack such an emotional punch. I also appreciate his dry sense of humor.

Below I’ve ranked his four most popular novels from least favorite to favorite. Note that A Moveable Feast is among Hemingway’s most popular books, but since it’s a memoir rather than a novel (and since I haven’t read it yet), I’ve excluded it from this list. I’ll also link my full reviews of each book. 

Number 4: The Sun Also Rises

Coming in last is the first Hemingway novel I’ve ever read. I first read it in college and liked it, reread it this year and liked it less. While there are definitely things I admire about it, I didn’t feel the same depth of emotion as with his other novels. I thought the characterization and the inherent vibe that Hemingway conveyed of the lost generation after the war were the strong points of the novel, but the story was forgettable (there was intentionally no plot), and the travelogue of the characters going place to place was not interesting to me. 

Number 3: The Old Man and the Sea

This is the novella that won Hemingway the Nobel Prize in Literature. I definitely think there is a difference in Hemingway’s writing style in this one compared to the other three I’ve read; I think because it has such a narrow focus. The writing is so strong that Hemingway invested me into a guy catching a fish, which is insanely impressive.

Number 2: For Whom the Bell Tolls 

This book packed the most emotional toll for me. I left the book literally sobbing, “War is hell.” The only reason it’s in second place is because I had to warm up to the book at first, and it had a few dry chapters interspersed that lost my interest. But I think it had such an interesting view of war, since it was from the perspective of an independently working dynamiter rather than a typical soldier. It also had a great cast of secondary characters. My number one pick and For Whom the Bell Tolls are close in terms of ranking.

Number 1: A Farewell to Arms

This is the one Hemingway novel that I can see myself rereading multiple times throughout my life, if I continue to be as much of a rereader as I am now. It is the most consistently strong novel out of all the Hemingways I’ve read. The ending did make me emotional (but not as much as the ending of For Whom the Bell Tolls). And while Hemingway inserted his dry humor in all of the books except for maybe The Old Man and the Sea, I think it shone more in this novel. Or perhaps it was the most balanced in this one.

Final Thoughts: Is it a coincidence that the two highest rated are the ones that took place during wartime? Probably not. I don’t claim to be an expert on Hemingway’s biographical history or his internal thoughts, but I think that his experience in the war impacted him greatly and weighed heavily on his mind throughout his life, and that uniquely qualified him to write about the subject. He was able to write about war in such a pragmatic way and let the inevitable horrors that is the reality of war speak for itself.