Hotel Florida--Truth, Love, and Death in the Spanish Civil War

January 20, 2014
During Spanish Civil War of the 1930s, American reporters Ernest Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn blustered around with a sometimes daring, often obnoxious self-confidence in their separate quests to get the latest scoops from the front. Vaill (Everybody Was So Young) combines their professional and personal stories with those of their European colleagues, partners Robert Capa and Gerda Taro, and the Madrid Foreign Press Office’s Arturo Barea and Ilsa Kulcsar. Mentioned only rarely, the formerly sumptuous Hotel Florida served as a Madrid base, allowing the courageous, ambitious journalists to interact with Barea and Kulcsar, who convinced their superiors to cease censoring the journalists’ reports. Vaill vividly recounts specific scenes of dying Spanish soldiers and citizens captured photographically by the journalists as well as deftly describing how Gellhorn insinuated herself into Hemingway’s marriage. Memorably, Capa and Taro’s heartbreaking relationship results in insightful photographs and top-notch reporting while Spanish native Barea and Austrian Kulcsar maintain their dignity even as they flee nearly penniless from Madrid, each suddenly without a country. Beautifully told, Vaill’s story captures the timeless immediacy of warfront reporting with the universal struggle to stay in love, just before the Nazis permanently changed the European landscape. 16p. b&w illus. Agent: Eric Simonoff, William Morris Endeavor.

January 15, 2014
Vaill (Somewhere: The Life of Jerome Robbins, 2006, etc.) follows a handful of characters (some are celebrities, some not) through the Spanish Civil War. Subdividing her chapters by months, the author sets herself a difficult task: chasing Ernest Hemingway, Martha Gellhorn, Arturo Barea, Ilsa Kulcsar, Endre Friedmann (aka Robert Capa) and Gerta Pohorylle through the political and military chaos in Spain and elsewhere. Among the many popping up for cameos are Stephen Spender, Eric Blair (George Orwell) and John Dos Passos. Although it will be difficult for readers to turn their eyes away from the power couple (Hemingway and Gellhorn), Vaill does a good job of getting us deeply interested in the lives, experiences and, sadly, the deaths of some of the others. It helps her cause, too, that she elected to portray Hemingway in the most unflattering (and deserved?) light. We see his pettiness and his professional jealousy; we watch him swinging away at people in bars. Early in the conflict, we also see Capa and other photographers staging acting scenes (including, in a way, his famous image of a wounded warrior in midfall on a Spanish hillside) and Gellhorn fabricating a story about a lynching in the American South. It was certainly a different time in journalism. Vaill shows us images of incredible courage--especially Capa's--and political intrigue (the Russians were especially perfidious--and Stalin's reeking presence) and the absolute confusion that reigned. (The truth concealed itself quite well.) She also points us toward Hitler, and we witness his invasion of Austria and his designs on Czechoslovakia. A touching epilogue records the deaths of all her principals. War, sex, friendship, betrayal, celebrity, rivalry, jealousy, idealism, foolishness and foppery--all this and more gather in the lobby of Madrid's Hotel Florida.

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April 1, 2014
As if civil war wasn't torturous enough, the Spanish Civil War had the misfortune to become entangled in larger global issues of ideology on the eve of WWII. That subtext added to the complexity of deciphering who was friend or foe as Francisco Franco overthrew the government and leftist rebels fought back. Thousands of miles away, Ernest Hemingway saw the war as a way to revive a flagging career and get back his zest. Martha Gelhorn, an ambitious young journalist, also saw a career opportunity and a chance to make a lover of Hemingway. In Paris, Robert Capa and Gerda Taro, lovers and idealistic photographers, saw a chance to capture history in the infancy of photojournalism. Arturo Barea and Ilsa Kulcsar were press officers torn between telling the truth and struggling to support their crumbling cause. Vaill taps unpublished letters and diaries as well as official documents to bring intimacy and immediacy to a new look at the war from the perspective of three couples whose paths crossed. This is high drama and an assemblage of characters uniquely suited to appreciate and record it.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)

November 1, 2013

Vaill here does for 1930s Spain what she did for 1920s Paris in Everybody Was So Young: Gerald and Sara Murphy--A Lost Generation Love Story. She illuminates a cataclysmic time and place through the lives of intriguing individuals. As civil war rocks Spain, Ernest Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn look to each other for love, even as he seeks to reinvigorate his career and she seeks to jump-start hers. Meanwhile, Robert Capa and Gerda Taro go about inventing photojournalism, and Arturo Barea, chief of Madrid's loyalist foreign press office, and his Austrian deputy, Ilsa Kulcsar, walk the fine line between honest reporting and loyalty to a cause. History lovers will melt.

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 15, 2014

The tragic Spanish Civil War (1936-39) began as a rebellion of the military against the elected government and became a rehearsal for world war. The Nazis supplied Gen. Francisco Franco's Nationalists with bomber planes while Soviet Russia armed the Loyalists, defending the Spanish Republic. In the midst of this, left-leaning journalists and photographers flocked to besieged Madrid's Hotel Florida to report on the Loyalist fight against Fascism. Popular biographer Vaill (Everybody Was So Young: Gerald and Sara Murphy--a Lost Generation Love Story) here follows three leftist couples caught up in the heroic but doomed Loyalist cause. Most prominent are literary lion Ernest Hemingway and his new girlfriend, reporter Martha Gellhorn. Their ego-driven journalism offers some comic relief (i.e., celebrity writers slumming near the front). Vaill goes easier on the less glamorous anti-fascists, e.g., photographer Robert Capa and his partner, Gerda Taro. The only Spaniard in the bunch is writer Arturo Barea, who managed the Madrid press office with Viennese Ilsa Kulcsar. All of them romanticized the Loyalist cause while ignoring its brutal Soviet leadership. A victory by either side would in fact be dangerous for Spain. Vaill mines memoirs of the period for her gossipy popular history, full of set-piece scenes that include the thoughts and feelings of characters (but there's no invented dialog). Her gift for character portrayal keeps the book moving along, particularly with such fleeting figures as novelists John Dos Passos and Josephine Herbst. VERDICT The kind of history that readers will say "reads like a novel." It is bound to be popular with general readers of 20th-century history. [See Prepub Alert, 11/1/13.]--Stewart Desmond, New York

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.