Mrs Hemingway by Naomi Wood

In Mrs Hemingway (which I finished in three sittings – I could not put it down!) Naomi Woods exhibits a style that is succinct, yet metaphoric, like a Jazz-age flapper, bejewelled and perfectly put together upon a skeletal frame. Despite its title, this novel is as much an exploration of Hemingway’s history as it is a journey through the eyes and hearts of his wives. The seamless transitions from one woman to the next hints at a tumultuous marriage with four faces. One wife is already blurring into focus, as the other is fading away, although none of them disappear for good and each believes she will be the last.

Mrs Hemingway is a tour de force of characterisation and you quickly forget that you’re reading a novel, a work of Naomi Wood’s imagination, and not a biography. Hemingway remains a shadowy being whose presence – and more notably whose absence – blows hotly through the lives of his wives like a Sirocco: hot tempered and unpredictable. The impression is of a tortured being whose desperation drives him to leave a wake of destruction behind him. The tender moments evoked by Wood’s words feels very real, and are clearly very well researched. Upon finishing the book, I was thick-headed with the will to have know the great Ernest Hemingway myself, and dare I say it, to have loved him.

One of the most delectable things about this novel it the little insights it offers into the bohemian lifestyles of Hemingway, the Fitzgeralds, the Murohys.  Through the carefully crafted words, you peak through a little window onto the avant-garde world of years now gone, where writers held as much status as movie stars, and everything was an indulgence. The novel itself is divided into four parts, with each sections dedicated to a different wife in the order in which Hemingway married them. The characters of the wives are distinctive and well defined, allowing you to feel their triumphs and heartache, and even share the seemingly fevered love with which each of them pursue Hemingway.

The writing is beautiful and elegant. We’re easily transported from the the different exotic settings in which each wife attempts to build a life from which Hemingway will not stray, from the Antibes to Paris to Cuba to Key West. Finished this book in only three settings, I found very hard to put it down. I’ve even been enticed into reading other similarly themed books, of which Naomi Woods gives a number of recommended titles at the end of Mrs Hemingway. It will definitely remain on the “keepers” shelf – and may even be reread sooner than expected! A moveable feast, indeed!