Mrs Hemingway by Naomi Wood

August 13, 2019

In the dazzling summer of 1926, Ernest Hemingway and his wife Hadley travel from their home in Paris to a villa in the south of France. They swim, play bridge and drink gin. But wherever they go they are accompanied by the glamorous and irrepressible Fife. Fife is Hadley’s best friend. She is also Ernest’s lover.

Mrs Hemingway depicts the turbulent life of Ernest Hemingway through the eyes of his four wives. Each wife has her own segment of the novel in which to tell her story. Knowing little about Hemingway's private life, I was amazed to see how frequently the wives' dovetailed with each other, becoming infatuation, lover, mistress and then subsequent wife.

Naomi Wood describes the south of France in all its 1920's glamour and beautifully contrasts it to the heady weeks Ernest spent in Cuba and later on in Post-war Paris. I loved that the women who loved him best were the ones to tell his story. Ernest does of course have a voice in the narrative but it's really the strength and grit of these four women that support him and push him to become the literary great that we all know. For the most part I found Ernest to be an insufferable character and I couldn't understand how these fantastic women were drawn into his chaos.

I devoured this library book in two days, it's pacy, alluring, frustratingly compulsive and heartbreaking. Which ultimately is the perfect way to describe the man himself.