The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemmingway

It is said that Hemmingway revolutionized modern fictional writing with his direct, almost brusque style of writing. Some call it the "hard-boiled style": macho and to-the-point.

The Old Man and the Sea is a novella. I finished it on the train journey to and from school. It is about an old fisherman — how he catches an extraordinarily huge marlin — and his relationship with a boy apprentice.

Primarily, it is an adventure-type of story. His relationship with the boy adds a bit of "heart" to it.

The religious comments, such as when Hemmingway writes: "Ay, he said aloud. There is no translation for this word and perhaps it is just a noise such as a man might make, involuntarily, feeling the nail go through his hands and into the wood" (107), isn't central to the story. They seem to be off-the-cuff remarks.