Mrs. Hemingway

May 1, 2014
The four wives of Ernest Hemingway-each loved, each abandoned-are given understated yet telling voices as they recount their relationships with a mercurial giant of literature."He is so good at being in love that Ernest Hemingway makes a rotten husband," reckons Martha Gellhorn, the third and most rebellious of the writer's four spouses. Hemingway's life is familiar territory, and Wood (The Godless Boys, 2011) treads close on the heels of The Paris Wife, Paula McLain's recent novel about Hadley, the first Mrs. Hemingway, but still brings freshness and grace to her matrimonial survey. Thrifty Hadley, from the Midwest, is the most conventional of the women, Hemingway's companion during his poorest years. Her mistake is to try to stifle her husband's affair with wealthy Fife (Pauline Pfeiffer) by embracing it; the trio's tense 1926 holiday in the south of France ends with Hemingway selecting his mistress over his wife. Twelve years later, in Key West, it's Fife's turn to be displaced, this time by young Gellhorn, the future war correspondent. After his second divorce, Hemingway and Gellhorn live together idyllically in Cuba, but as he slows down and suggests children (despite already having three), she refuses to stop working. Tired of his selfishness, Gellhorn eventually asks for a divorce in Paris during its liberation in 1944; although Hemingway resists, he's already writing love poems to Mary Welsh, to whom he will be married when he commits suicide in 1961. Evocative of place, neat in structure, Wood's novel occasionally tries to understand Hemingway's promiscuity but in essence leaves his perspective out of the picture, instead presenting his charisma, grandstanding, prodigious boozing and dark complexity from the individual points of view of the women: "such unlikely sisters."With its delicate phrasing, softly voiced but insightful portraits, and unsensational handling of the love triangles, Woods' novel revisits literary myth with restrained empathy.

COPYRIGHT(2014) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

May 1, 2014

Many stories have been told about the passionate, and sometimes manic, Ernest Hemingway. Biographies have also been written about each of his four wives. Now there is a book that skillfully blends all of these accounts into one poignant tale. Making her U.S. debut, British author Wood (The Godless Boys) has written a well-researched novel about Hemingway's spouses, pulling material from personal letters and archives. Each wife tells her own story, effortlessly moving the reader through almost 40 years of Hemingway's life. Hadley is a tender mother and doting wife. Beautiful Pauline is admired by the writer's artist friends. Martha, a journalist, found wartime reporting more exhilarating than marriage. Mary, also a journalist, struggles through her husband's depression, alcoholism, and suicide. Each woman's story flows seamlessly into the next, providing a detailed account of Hemingway's erratic nature. VERDICT Fans of literary biographies and biographical novels such as Paula McClain's best seller The Paris Wife will adore Wood's second novel. It will also appeal more broadly to those interested in history or historical fiction, women's issues, and romance. [No doubt Wood did some of her research at the British Library where she was the inaugural Eccless Centre British Library Writer in Residence in 2012.--Ed.]--Shannon Marie Robinson, Denison Univ. Lib., Granville, OH

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2014
In their own ways and in their own times, Hadley, Pauline, Martha, and Mary all loved Ernest Hemingway. All experienced the passionate days of early courtship, the midsummer lethargy, the chipped-ice daiquiris that became acceptable earlier and earlier in the day. They all knew the sting of betrayal as his notoriously wandering eye eventually turned to another woman, and they all knew the safety of his embrace. They knew how to weather the tides of his creativity, how to support and nourish and heal and mend. While Hemingway's stories are known worldwide, Wood used copious love letters, diaries, and telegrams to flesh out the stories that these women might have told. Flitting from bohemian 1920s Paris to sunny Havana, from Paris in the days of WWII to 1960s America, Mrs. Hemingway spans eras. Wood's research gives this passionate story a firm foundation, and readers who enjoyed Loving Frank (2007) and The Paris Wife (2011) will adore this ideal summer read. Seamlessly blending known facts with fiction, Mrs. Hemingway is an absorbing, tender glimpse inside the lives of those in Hemingway's inner circle.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)