The Sun Also Rises

By: Ernest Hemingway

Narrated by: William Hurt

Length: 7 hrs and 46 mins

Publisher's Summary

The Sun Also Rises is one of Ernest Hemingway's masterpieces and a classic example of his spare but powerful style. A poignant look at the disillusionment and angst of the post-World War I generation, the story introduces two of Hemingway's most unforgettable characters: Jake Barnes and Lady Brett Ashley.

Follow the flamboyant Brett and the hapless Jake as they journey from the wild nightlife of 1920s Paris to the brutal bullfighting rings of Spain with a motley group of expatriates. It is an age of moral bankruptcy, spiritual dissolution, unrealized love, and vanishing illusions. First published in 1926, The Sun Also Rises helped to establish Hemingway as one of the greatest writers of the 20th century.

Who's your papa? Listen to more from Ernest Hemingway.

©1926 Charles Scribner's Sons. Copyright renewed 1954 Ernest Hemingway. All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form (P)2006 Simon and Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved. AUDIOWORKS is an imprint of Simon and Schuster Audio Division, Simon and Schuster, Inc.

Critic Reviews

• Audie Award Finalist, Classic, 2007

"An absorbing, beautifully and tenderly absurd, heart-breaking narrative....It is a truly gripping story, told in lean, hard athletic prose...magnificent." (The New York Times)

Disappointed with narration

Wished I had read rather than listened. Very weak narration as compared to other audible books. Hemingway no problem.... Weak acting

22 of 22 people found this review helpful

Great actor, terrible reader, kills classic

What didn’t you like about William Hurt’s performance?

His foreign accents are abominable. Even his performance of the main character is completely flat. Frankly, I didn't even finish listening because the accents were so distracting!

19 of 19 people found this review helpful

WORST preformance of an audio book! Ever!

Would you try another book from Ernest Hemingway and/or William Hurt?

Ernest Hemmingway - yes. William Hurt - never again.

Would you be willing to try another one of William Hurt’s performances?

No. No. No. Such a boing performance. I've read this story 2 times and thought I'd try listening to my (once) favorite story. Almost abandoned listening to the story multiple times. No tone change in the character's voice. It was like listening to a teenager tell a story he really doesn't want to tell. Monotone and boooreing!

You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?

The story is fantastic.

Any additional comments?

If you're a fan of Ernest Hemmingway, stick to the printed version of this book and try For Whom the Bell Tolls in audio version.

9 of 9 people found this review helpful

love Hemingway, not Hurt

I'm sorry but William Hurt hurts this novel. He does fine with the dialogue passages which makes sense i guess as an actor, but his voice and bored rendition of the narrative passages is just plain poor. At times as he's reading it seemed that he was seeing the text for the first time, his emphasis and inflection is off all over the place.

This is a great novel and I wish they would get the reading by Adams that Books on Tape had that I bought the cassettes of years ago. Much better reading. Adams did many of EH's novels and did them well, and though then I may have wished for variety in voices, I'd take those now.

Nice idea to have distinctive voices for EH, but you need some more dynamic readers, not ones that sound bored by the project. Donald Sutherland is a great actor, but a terrible reader of Old Man. Get the Charlton Heston versions of Old Man and Snows if you can and Scourby's reading of Macomber is awesome, Heston and Scourby are perfection.

25 of 27 people found this review helpful

Utterly painful droning narration.

This book wasn’t for you, but who do you think might enjoy it more?

Insomniacs. People who unreservedly love William Hurt

What was one of the most memorable moments of The Sun Also Rises?

Giving up and turning the awful droning off.

Who would you have cast as narrator instead of William Hurt?

I cant stay awake through the "Hurt" I realize there are all different tastes and people prefer different narrational styles. However William Hurt to my ears is so painfully flat, droning, and lacking any real character depth in his narration as to make this book listenable. I have had this book for over 6 months and have tried to listen to is many times without success. This is very rare for me to be unable to listen to a story (especially a well written story) due to the narrator. I have narrators I prefer not to listen to (Scott Brick) however I still managed to listen through a @40 hour book (The Company) multiple times in the years it has been in my library. This book however is possibly the first time in my @15 years as an Audible subscriber I can't manage to finish to a book I purchased. Hell I doubt I have managed to stay awake through more than the first couple of hours. As for who to read this story, I would say Campbell Scott. He did a fantastic job on For Whom the Bell Tolls. For me Campbell Scott just gets the Hemingway pacing, cool and tonality.

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

Hugely disappointed by the monotone narration. Such a waste of a good story and a credit.

Any additional comments?

Listen to the sample very carefully, It doesn't get any better and probably gets much worse. ZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzz Can I get a refund for this wasted credit?

14 of 15 people found this review helpful

Meh

Narrator seems unmotivated by the story and so was I. Not sure why this is a classic. Maybe better in text.

5 of 5 people found this review helpful

Great story badly read.

Would you consider the audio edition of The Sun Also Rises to be better than the print version?

William Hurt's bizarre phrasing of the narrative portions was a Major distraction. His rendering of Spanish and French accents was very good, but Bret's English accent was truly bizarre.

What was one of the most memorable moments of The Sun Also Rises?

The bullfights, beautifully, graphically, tragically described mirrored the encounters of the main characters, always coming closer to each other, to love or to fight, and then backing away, a tangled dance like that of matador and bull, dodging, feinting, charging and ending, not in death, but still with a sense of tragedy.

Would you be willing to try another one of William Hurt’s performances?

No. Not ever.

5 of 5 people found this review helpful

Dry reading of a story that seems stuck

What did you like best about The Sun Also Rises? What did you like least?

I liked the characters and the story setting. The descriptions of bullfighting and scenery were great. Really got a feeling I was there. On the bad side, I did not know why I was there. The whole story kind of seemed aimless.

Would you recommend The Sun Also Rises to your friends? Why or why not?

No. The reading of the story was too lethargic. Made the whole story just seem listless. I much prefer the other Hemingway books. For Whom the Bell Tolls was fantastic.

What didn’t you like about William Hurt’s performance?

Too lethargic. Seemed like all the characters were William Hurt. Other narrators seem to do a better job making the characters more unique in the reading.

If this book were a movie would you go see it?

Yes. I would like to see the scenery in a movie. Despite the light plot, Hemingway paints with his words and the beauty of the places shine through.

3 of 3 people found this review helpful

Narration just does not give the story a chance

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

I have always enjoyed and respected William Hurt as a very professional actor. I feel as though he failed miserably in narrating this novel. He just does not seem to get Hemingway. He does not come close to the excellent narration Stacey Keach provides in the short stories or the narrator in For Whom the Bell Tolls.

Who would you have cast as narrator instead of William Hurt?

Stacey Keach

3 of 3 people found this review helpful

Awful reader.

Would you try another book from Ernest Hemingway and/or William Hurt?

Yes I would read another book by Ernest Hemingway, and no, I will never buy a book read by William Hurt. He was awful. I couldn't get past ch. 1.

Who was your favorite character and why?

I don't have one. I only got through chapter one because William Hurt was awful at the reading. He read so slow and deliberate; I couldn't stand it.

What didn’t you like about William Hurt’s performance?

I felt like he was reading to a Kindergartner. He read so slow and he enunciated too much. Even during dialogue, he didn't have any personality.

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from The Sun Also Rises?

I don't know....didn't hear much.

Any additional comments?

I wish there were another version with another reader.

3 of 3 people found this review helpful

Excellent story, mediocre narrator

The narrator made this a little bit of a suffering to listen to this story

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

Hemingway again but not Hurt

Would you try another book written by Ernest Hemingway or narrated by William Hurt?

This was my first encounter with Hemingway, and threatened to be my last. If I had been listening to an author without such a pedigree, and therfore couldn't go online and be reminded by all and sundry that this is a defining novel, I suspect I would have walked away. This is undoubtedly partly my own fault - I came at the novel cold, without any reading about the context or themes, which at the distance of years would have been extremely useful. However, I believe much of the problem was the narration, which frequently irritated enough to distract concentration from the story. I'm a Scot, so Mike was a bad start - a cartoon character, sounding like a drunken Shrek. The other Brits had accents equally comic-book ridiculous, Brett's variable and often grating American take on Brit upper class just about killing her characterisation. Add in some Fawlty Towers Spaniards and only the Americans sound in any way true. In addition the narrator seems to eschew any flowing sentence structure, pausing where (I presume?) there is no punctuation in the novel, and sometimes grinding almost to a halt before jolting off. Again, perhaps my lack of familiarity with Hemingway is to blame, and he is supposed to be read in the form of heroic poetry, but I found it another layer of distraction.

Any additional comments?

Having read a number of online notes about the book since listening, I would certainly revisit it, as clearly I missed much of what makes this novel stand out. However, that will be a different narrator or a hard copy. Meanwhile I will buy another Hemingway on Audible, and watch Shrek again, where a stereotyped Scottish accent can be appropriately enjoyed.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Excellent Book.

A classic novel that stay forever. Fantastic narrator. Enjoyed it very much!

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

The Redemption of a Great Last Line

If anyone but Hurt had read it I think I'd have given up. It's sexist and all the posturing and macho drinking just pretty dull. Empty people being empty, but a very good depiction of that. He can write. All very vivid. And the last line is so wonderful I forgave him for being Hemingway.

William Hurt is superb

The painful fall of a war-struck generation that has lost its path to the future, which really looks like our deprived, disorientated young generation.
Jake and Brett's true love is breathtaking.

I long for a time...

I long for a time when such things, and such people, are possible...sadly I feel that I missed it, and them.

The Lost Generation

I love being immersed in Hemingway’s world, and feeling part of the Lost Generation.

However, the book lost 1 star due to William Hurt’s awful Scottish accent which seemed to morph from vaguely Scottish, to Welsh, to Russian.

Sad for it to come to an end

Thougherly enjoyed this adaptation. I was especially impressed with the narrators repertoire of accents, which seems to be an issue in some other reviews, but not for me. I felt like I was transported back to the 1920s and really got a feel for the characters.

Wonderful if listened to at 1.5x speed!

Loved it so much but my oh my is his performance ssssslllooooooooowww.

Was great when I listed sped up 1.5 x

Disappointed

Old Man and the Sea is my favourite book. So I decided to check out more Hemingway. I was very disappointed with this. It was not really about anything. So flowery.