Love and Ruin

March 26, 2018
McLain (The Paris Wife) strikingly depicts Martha Gellhorn’s burgeoning career as a writer and war correspondent during the years of her affair with and marriage to Ernest Hemingway. The narrative begins when Gellhorn, who has garnered national recognition for her field reporting on the Great Depression, meets Hemingway and travels with him to cover the Spanish Civil War at his suggestion. The war both horrifies and inspires her to continue writing, particularly one traumatic moment when she witnesses a child being killed by a mortar. While in Spain, Gellhorn and Hemingway become romantically involved and then move to Cuba, set up house, and launch into a productive period of writing and publishing. Things go well for a few years, but Hemingway’s neediness and jealousy eventually poisons their happiness and forces Gellhorn to choose between her own career and indulging his desire for a devoted wife. Realizing her true passion comes from on-the-ground reporting, Gellhorn decides to cover D-Day by leaving Hemingway and stowing away on the first hospital ship to land at Normandy, wading ashore to become the “first journalist, male or female, to make it there and report back.” Gellhorn emerges as a fierce trailblazer every bit Hemingway’s equal in this thrilling book.

Fans of THE PARIS WIFE will embrace McLain's imagining of Ernest Hemingway's romantic life, based on extensive primary sources. Narrator January LaVoy does a fine job of creating the fictional voice of Martha Gellhorn, a journalist and novelist in her own right who became Hemingway's third wife. LaVoy's performance can be richly enthusiastic as she captures the settings of Gellhorn's work--from war-torn battlefronts to the idyllic Cuban countryside and America's Midwest. Sometimes the dialogue seems stilted, with Hemingway's voice sounding too theatrical; other times, the action slows unnecessarily only to skim over significant questions. These flaws, though, don't detract significantly from the fascination the love story inspires. This audiobook will appeal to any listener eager to be transported. L.B.F. � AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine