This is the closest Hemingway ever gets to writing about what must have been one of the most traumatic episodes of his life. A bitter loneliness afflicts these characters. Women seem to exist wholly for the pleasure of his protagonists, like the good whiskey they're always extolling. Because there's only us two and in the world there's all the rest of them. Because you're too brave.
Nothing ever happens to the brave.
And so on. F ACED with the technical problem of how to put into English a novel whose entire cast speaks in Spanish, Hemingway hit upon the curious method of literally translating Spanish grammar, diction, and idiom to convey the language's character. This from a writer noted for his command of idiom. Hemingway couldn't not write in this style. The linked, run-on sentences, the plain vocabulary, the internal monologues, are pared down to give the narrative momentum.