For Whom the Bell Tolls...not me

I've never been a big fan of Ernest Hemingway.  His books are too male, too unadorned, and with female characters that lack any semblance of reality to me.  But I have just finished working my way slowly but surely through For Whom the Bell Tolls.

Slowly is the operative word here.  I usually zip through a novel hanging on to the story or falling in love with a character or reveling in the language but this book was a disappointment on all three levels for me. There were some snatches of effective writing and the final chapters depicting the battle and the blowing of the bridge had real power but there was so much to put up with before that--truly horrible writing about sex, extremely stilted dialogue and repetitive philosophizing about war, death and the meaning of life.  Maybe it's a book you should only read if you're young and a male, ideally in adolescence. 

Of course this is the opinion of someone who loves Henry James and thinks Middlemarch is the greatest book ever written.