I absolutely loved this book. Loved it. I knew I would: I
also really loved The Paris Wife and
I’m so there for largely fictionalised accounts of actual events. Like The Crown. That’s like a documentary in
my head, you know?
Anyhow, another book about Hemingway’s super complicated
love life set amongst the backdrop of the war? Yes please. I read 265 pages on
Sunday when I was tired and didn’t want to leave my house and it was glorious.
I liked it in part for the history; the first part was set in Spain, in the late
1930’s at the height of the Spanish Civil War – a period of history I know
little of and which was really really interesting to read about. So there was
that. It’s always fun to learn about things you feel you should probs know more
about. Everybody who knows me knows that I am weirdly drawn to books with a
wartime theme. & also really drawn to the likes of Hemingway and Fitzgerald
and what their lives might’ve been like. Generally though this is just a really
good story made better by the fact that it’s based in truth.
This is the story of Hemingway’s third wife, Martha Gellhorn
and it’s her story, not just the story of being married to Ernest
Hemingway and as a subject for a book she’s fascinating – the only woman on the
beach at Normandy, a war correspondent who travelled the world reporting on conflict.
The book follows her from before her first meeting with Hemingway to after
their divorce and it’s GOOD.
Hemingway is who you imagine Hemingway to be which is drunk
a lot of the time and a bit of a dick but with this sensitivity about him
still, loving too much sometimes and so volatile – being loved by Ernest
Hemingway seems like something that would have been intense and destructive and
McLain does well at portraying, and watching Martha grow as the book progresses
is the best thing: Hemingway is her hero when she first meets him, she falls in
love with him quickly and kind of gets swept along for a while, first his
mistress and then his wife but she has a strength of character which Ernest
needed I think, even though he perhaps didn’t know it and she stood her ground
and did her own thing and fought for her own career even as she felt like she
lived in his shadows somewhat and I liked that about her – she fought hard for
her seat at the table and wasn’t prepared to let that die just because her
husband shone brighter than the sun. Even as he tried to hold her back and even
as she feared doing her own thing might mean she lost him she never lost sight
of the fact that she needed to keep hold of her sense of self and I feel like
there’s something in that, that we all could learn from. Hemingway seemed toxic
in a lot of ways and sometimes it felt like he perhaps wanted her to sacrifice
her career, so supportive of her in the beginning but then wanting her to be just his wife whilst he basked in the
success of his work – he published For
Whom The Bell Tolls whilst married to Martha – but she was strong enough to
stand her ground, to fight to be her own person even as he stood in her way.
This book is obviously meticulously researched, and the most
interesting book I’ve read in ages. It was refreshing too, written in first
person which: let’s be real here, is a tricky thing to get right. McLain nails
it though, and I came away from this feeling like I knew Gellhorn, and
Hemingway too actually, they sprang from the pages and Gellhorn’s voice is so
clear here – self-deprecating and anxious and stubborn and determined and so
full of love and honestly? I liked the bits outside of her relationship with
Hemingway the best of all and I am so
glad this wasn’t just written as a journey to heartbreak, you know? I mean
it is that, it is a love story and
one that you get lost in and invested in and gripped by even though you know it’s
not going to end well, but it’s so much
more than that, and it’s the more than that that really did it for me. That
and the cats.
I finished this book and immediately googled Martha Gellhorn
and that says a lot, I think.
Oh, and it's out tomorrow: go get.
