Love and Ruin

Historical fiction novel of the relationship between Ernest Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn, his third wife. It's a great story and it as difficult to remember that the author re-created the dialogue. It seemed very real to me. I did not like Martha at first but grew to admire her. She traveled to many war zones, with and without Hemingway and made a name for herself writing the stories of ordinary people she encountered along the way. Martha and Ernest had a passionate attraction to each other and were together for about seven years, until the marriage self-destructed.

It is so satisfying when a lending library find is enjoyable! If you are like me, this novel will make you fall head over heels in love with Martha Gellhorn, both the historical figure and this fictionalized version of her, her terrible taste in men and all, briefly contemplate if you also love Ernest Hemingway at his very most charming, and then decide that he just really, really needed to sober up and go to therapy (no, that is not anachronistic, I'm confident he was only several degrees of separation from some great psychoanalysts). McLain's writing especially sings when she works to capture both the atrocities and the “new normal” of the war zones Gellhorn traveled to for her reporting - there was much in here, especially about pre-WWII Spain, that made me think of and feel pangs for Ukrainians right now. I think there were times that she was a bit too heavy-handed with Gellhorn's internal monologue about Hemingway (OF COURSE most other writers would have feelings about being married to the author of “For Whom the Bell Tolls” when it came out, and I wish there had been a bit more nuance in her struggle that I suspect existed in real life), but overall, McLain's achievement here is to introduce me to a remarkable person and journalist (She was one of the only journalists who landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day! And here is her searing account of the trial of Adolf Eichmann, which I suspect is unfortunately perennially relevant to humanity) that I don't think I otherwise would have gotten around to googling.