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Mrs Hemmingway by Naomi Wood

I have to confess I knew nothing about Ernest Hemmingway before reading this book so it was without presumption that I approached this fictional account based on the true story of his 4 wives.

First up was Hedley, meek, mild and with Ernest whilst he was a penniless nobody. In walks glamorous Fife (yes the names are silly) who makes a beeline for the couple, befriending Hedley and eventually taking Ernest to bed. One thing all the group couldn't get away with was the fact Hedley, despite knowing of her husbands affair, invites Fife to vacation with them which in reality lead to the end of her marriage. Why would you do that? WHY? We generally found Hedley too willing to roll over and just wanted her to slap Fife. She didn't though and when her marriage ended (having unsurprisingly given up on the 100 day seperation) she remained friends with both of them up until their deaths.

I admire Wood for the section that followed -Fifes. The reader was left hating Fife after Hedley and I really wasn't looking forward to reading her story. Nevertheless without making the reader fall in love with Fife, Wood gave an understanding to Fifes behaviour and at least she fought like tooth and nail when the inevitable newer woman appeared on the scene.

The third wife, Martha, appeared as though her story would be different with her section beginning with her wanting to divorce Ernest. She was much more career minded and her world didn't seem to revolve around Ernest like the others did. Yet she too fell for his charms and in the end their marriage only seemed to end because Mary his fourth and last wife arrived on the scene.

Mary was different and I wish Woods hadn't fast forwarded her story as she did. Abuse and serious depression were hinted at and it would have made a change to read about that as opposed to boy meets girl, falls in love, meets another girl and leaves. I really felt Marys sorrow once Ernest had died, her need to believe his death was an accident and then adding her effects to Ernests box of momentos, it was quite poignant.

We thought Harrys story was interesting and not knowing anything about Ernest I kept expecting the missing suitcase to make a reappearance. We decided Harry was a super fan bordering on stalker and I felt quite sad for him when he sat in the porch where Ernest died.

We all loved the settings of the book and the description which in parts reminded me of the very good Tigers in Red Weather (go read our post about it for more info).

Two of the group however made very good points. The first being that the book was very repetitive. In effect the same story happened over and over again. The second point was that none of the characters were really likeable except perhaps for Mary but as mentioned above her section was skipped over so we didn't really get a chance to like her. Ernest in particular appeared to be
a tortured genius who drank too much was childlike at times and extremely selfish. I've commented in the past how hard it is to like a book where none of the characters are likeable so it is to Woods credit that we liked the book as much as we did despite this fact.

It also massively wet our appetite for Ernest and his life. I had no idea about his circle of friends, his many wives, his drinking and his good looks and now am on a mission to find out more about him - question of the month! A Hemmingway book will perhaps be reviewed in the future. Watch this space.

The book got a 7 and next month's book is Revival by Stephen King. Happy reading.




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