Mrs. Hemingway

Written by Naomi Wood

Narrated by Kate Reading

The Paris Wife was only the beginning of the story…

Paula McLain’s New York Times bestselling novel
piqued readers’ interest about Ernest Hemingway’s romantic life. But Hadley was
only one of four women married, in turn, to the legendary writer. Just as T. C.
Boyle’s bestseller The Women completed the picture begun by Nancy
Horan’s Loving Frank, Naomi Wood’s Mrs. Hemingway tells the story of how it was to
love, and be loved by, the most famous and dashing writer of his generation. As
each wife struggles with his mistress for Ernest’s heart, and a place in his
bed, each marriage slips from tenderness to treachery. Each Mrs. Hemingway
thought it would last forever. Each one was wrong.

Told in four parts and populated with members of the fabled
“Lost Generation”-including Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, and F. Scott
Fitzgerald-Mrs. Hemingway interweaves the love letters, diaries, and
telegrams of four very different women into one spellbinding tale.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Blackstone Audio
• Release date: May 27, 2014
• ISBN: 9781482996081

Naomi Wood

Naomi Wood is the bestselling author of The Godless Boys and the award-winning Mrs. Hemingway, which won the British Library Writer’s Award and the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Award. It was shortlisted for the International Dylan Thomas Prize and selected for the Richard and Judy Book Club. Her work is available in sixteen languages. She teaches at the University of East Anglia and lives in Norwich with her family. The Hiding Game is her third novel; it was shortlisted for the Historical Writers' Association Gold Crown Award and longlisted for The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction.

Reviews for Mrs. Hemingway

[whisper1_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I'll look for more books by this author. This one was excellently written. Ernest Hemingway had four wives. He accumulated them like stars in the sky, looking on the horizon to see the brightest among many. He plucked another woman before letting go of the previous one.He was a cad, a charmer, a person who most likely thought he was sincere, yet he was far from that! Hadley Richardson was his Paris wife who was with him when he hung along the glamours Fitzgeralds, and the in crowd -- the "lost generation" of authors during that time period. Latching on to Hadley's friend, Pauline Pfeiffer, the three of them traveled and lived together for a period of time before poor Hadley had enough and gave Ernest the divorce he desired. She also gave him one of his three sons.Fife Pauline), was glamours where Hadley wasn't. She was exceedingly rich and very charming. Neither Ernest or Fife could let go of their emotionally and sexually charged affair. Within days of the divorce from Hadley, he married wife number two. Pauline and Ernest had two sons, a rather large lifestyle in Cuba and the Keys of Florida, but even she could not quench his thirst for cheating and carousing. Wife number three was Martha Gellhorn, an accomplished journalist who intentionally placed herself on the front line of wars. While Ernest found her incredibly intelligent, he tried to keep her at home, barefoot and pregnant if he could have had his way. He didn't get his way and Martha was the only wife who left him, stinging his ego and for a short period of time, smacking his self conceit.Mary Welsh was yet another woman found before it ended with Martha. More sedate than the others, she loved him and saw him through his days of talk of suicide. Eventually, he did indeed end his life, leaving each current and previous wife wondering how the storm of his life impacted on them so tragically.Written from the perspective of each wife, the chapters begin at the end of the relationships as the wives look back, and eventually becoming one of the group of four.Highly Recommended.

[alisony-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I've had this book on my 'to read' list for three years now since I read a storming review about it when it was first published. At last I came across a copy of it last week in my local secondhand shop, and it lived up to the hype.In this novel Naomi Wood creates a fictionalised account of the four marriages of Ernest Hemingway, portraying a man who loved his wives deeply yet who loved women in general too much to ever commit to monogamy. Four sections are narrated by each of the four wives, and it's an interesting angle through which to explore the hay day of that era and the personal life of one of the literary greats. The book takes us from Hemingway on the cusp of success in Paris to his final marriage when he begins to feel washed up as an author and ends up taking his own life.The dramas of a third person in each marriage are played out amidst a fabulous social backdrop that includes the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda. Wood portrays him as a good looking man with incredible charisma, whose wives are (mostly) so infatuated with him they're desperate to overlook his indiscretions if he'll only stay with them.This book works on so many levels. The crowded marriages are made up of complex relationships between the philandering author, the wives and the mistresses, who all become inevitably, reluctantly intertwined with each other. The affairs never stay secret for long in the wild, arty social circles in which Hemingway moves, and the famous Lost Generation are every bit as fascinating as the Bloomsbury Group were in London. It's also a fly on the wall account of the making and downfall of a darling of the literary world, and of the immense challenges of being married to a genius and dealing with the emotional swings that such temperament brings.I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and flew through it over the weekend. There's something about those arty social sets from the early 20th century that's so absorbing, and it's prompted me to push some of Hemingway's work up on my to read list.5 stars - a fabulous page-turner. Don't be put off by the chic lit-esque cover.

[bearette24 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Really enjoyed this book. Reminiscent of The Paris Wife, but it explores all four of Hemingway's marriages - to gentle Hadley Richardson, obsessive Fife, ambitious Martha and sunny Mary.

[sidiki-8 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

A bit too easy reading for me, more like from the romance genre. That maybe because the social circle is full of lazy, superficial, self absorbed and spoilt lot of alchoholics out to steal other people's spouses with not an iota of conscience or responsibility to society or children. I say children because the atmosphere was like children should be seen not heard.i braced myself to get something intellectually out of the book, but the whole time it just drags on and on about the same set of people with no values, but it is not Noami Woods incapability, the subject of the book is such. I have only read Hemingway's short stories ( More than 30 years back) out of which only "snows of Kilimanjaro" comes to mind, and it stayed in my mind, but I wanted to know what the hype about him was about. I will try to read his other works one day.

[alphawoman_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Nothing knew to learn. Except the antics of a one Mr. Cuzzemano. A sad exploration of Hemingway's need to be in love and not being able to quite leave the other behind before marrying the next one.

[linda.boschert · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I loved this book! It was well written and paced well. I had recently read "The Paris Wife" which made we want to read more about the wives of Ernest Hemingway, although I have yet to read any of Hemingway's actual books. I loved delving into the stories of the various wives. My husband and I visited the Hemingway House in Key West a few years ago and I only wish I had had this book to read at that time. I highly recommend it!

[missizicks · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The book was an interesting fictionalisation, and I wonder how much the available information on each woman influenced the way they are portrayed by Naomi Wood. Only Mary Welsh wrote her own memoir. Only Mary Welsh comes across with any warmth.Hadley Richardson was wife #1. Her tale made me sad, how weak Hemingway was and how accepting of his weakness she was. It didn't make me warm to Hemingway any.Fife Pfeiffer was wife #2. She was the winner to Hadley's loser. Feistier when it came to her own losing, but still not feisty enough to force Hemingway to grow a pair and stop chasing the thrill of the first flush.Martha Gellhorn was wife #3. A college-girl crush on a famous writer that turned into codependency via marriage. She is Fife+. More of a match, more her own person, but consequently blind to the inevitable, because she is focused on her own selfish needs, not his. She is neither admirable nor sympathetic. I feel like they deserved each other and nobody should care.Mary Welsh was the better wife, wife #4. She had the measure of the man, and the man was older. The extraordinary events of the 20th century had their impact, too, it comes across. To live through 2 world wars, the Spanish Civil War and the upheavals of modern life's rapid change meant Mary was a different woman to the previous three wives, and Hemingway a different man, by the time their paths crossed. I liked Mary.

[elenchus_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

The conceit here is: there's not one but four Mrs Hemingways. We get novelized renditions of each biography, depicted in two or three vignettes each from different time periods in the relationship, interleaving them throughout the chapter. (Each Mrs Hemingway gets a chapter, which is sectioned by date, see-sawing between earlier and later vignettes.) Wood does not attempt to tell a complete story of events, but to reveal the nature of the relationship each woman has with Hemingway, more or less at the beginning and at the end of each marriage.1 - Hadley Richardson: the vignette here is the breakup, an ill-advised vacation with the mistress, at Mrs H's suggestion. Contrasted with their time in Paris. The Hemingways have one son.2 - Pauline (Fife) Pfeiffer, the vignette this time Ernest's affair with journo Martha Gellhorn in Spain; ironic in that Fife was the mistress breaking up Hadley's marriage, She says as much at one point. Fife & Ernest have 2 sons. Contrasting vignette her time with Ernest, breaking up his earlier marriage. At one point, Fife confronts Ernest at a party at which she sees him with a masked woman, unmasks her and finds it's not Martha. says she won't give him a divorce any time soon, and chapter ends.3 - Martha 'Marty' or 'Rabbit' Gellhorn: apparently never pursued Ernest, was motivated by her writing and his expertise, yet she marries him. Unlike others, doesn't stay home: continues her war journalism, often without him. In one scene, watches him write a postcard ("everything fabulous") to Fife, after he tells Martha "I want to marry you". These scenes, whether factual or invented, made it less and less believable that women would fall for him. What motivates him? Ego and sex? After this chapter, it would seem severe insecurity and loneliness. 4 - Mary Walsh: meets Ernest in Paris, on assignment in 1944, Ernest wanted to stay away and wanted Marty to as well, but Marty needed to go and so went aboard a steamer laden with dynamite. Ernest flies over himself, arriving before her, and very consciously allows her the more dangerous transport. Ernest "liberates" the Paris Ritz, but has an affair while Marty is gone in London (all of 17 days, he's so insecure he can't stand even that short period).Wood never identifies biographer Jeffrey Meyer's claim that Ernest's marriages follow a pattern due to an early breakup. From wikipedia: While recuperating, he fell in love, for the first time, with Agnes von Kurowsky, a Red Cross nurse seven years his senior. By the time of his release and return to the United States in January 1919, Agnes and Hemingway had decided to marry within a few months in America. However, in March, she wrote that she had become engaged to an Italian officer. Biographer Jeffrey Meyers states in his book Hemingway: A Biography that Hemingway was devastated by Agnes' rejection, and in future relationships, he followed a pattern of abandoning a wife before she abandoned him.Interesting to have read it, and certainly does not leave a favourable impression of Hemingway, the man. //Hadley loses Ernest's COMPLETE UNPUBLISHED MSS on a train journey, astounding. Took with her to meet Ernest on vacation, stepped out of the train car to smoke / buy cigarettes, returned to find the case gone. Carbons and original drafts, all brought in one suitcase, all lost. One of my favourite items from the story, learning this literary fact. A side-plot involves the efforts of Harry Cuzzamano, a hanger-on or perhaps merely an opportunist, to locate this set of unpublished papers, and make money from it.Evidently both Ernest's father and Hadley's father suicided. Ernest's mother mails him the pistol with which his father shot himself along with a cake, and he's said to keep it with his collection. (Ernest has this revolver in Paris Ritz 1944.) Ernest quoted as calling his father a coward -- yet he does the same. Ernest suffered great pains from various injuries, especially after 2 airplane crashes in Africa, Wood writes that Ernest had electroshock therapy shortly before his suicide; and suffered head trauma from the 2 plane crashes. Died not in Key West house, at his desk as unaccountably I'd thought, but in Ketchum ND, in a vestibule. He'd been discovered by Mary just there, with a shotgun, and persuaded not to go through with it a few weeks prior. Mary gives story to reporters and in obituary that death was an accident, and few knew of clinic visit / EST. Harry Cuzzumano visits and is told by Mary. Hmmn.

[snash_44 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a well written, insightful, and I imagine historically accurate history of Hemingway's four marriages told from the viewpoint of the wives.

[alanteder · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The Paris, Key West, Spanish and Idaho WivesNaomi Wood singlehandedly leaps over the competition with a sequel to The Paris Wife (which was by Paula McLain) that also covers the other wives of Ernest Hemingway although in a shorter format by dedicating roughly ¼ of the book each to Hadley Richardson, Pauline Pfeiffer, Martha Gellhorn and Mary Welsh.The book is told in succeeding first-person accounts by each of the women, usually at the time of the end of each of their marriages (in Mary Welsh's case after Hemingway's passing) with flashbacks to earlier happier times. Naomi Wood does a great job at capturing the main character of each woman and Kate Reading does an equally fine job at narrating for each of them. Martha Gellhorn comes across as perhaps a bit softer toned than she was reputed to be in real life and Mary Welsh's section is light on the difficulties of the final years, but that just leaves room for future historical fiction accounts. There is at least one completely fictional character that is used to slightly tie the 4 stories together - a book collector / profiteer named Harry Cuzzemano makes cameo appearances throughout while seeking rare Hemingway editions or manuscripts. Perhaps this is a commentary on the greater Hemingway industry which seems to be never ending with the ongoing publication of 20 volumes of letters and new "restored" editions of each of the writer's own works being slowly released as well (A Farewell to Arms & A Moveable Feast so far, and The Sun Also Rises this summer 2014).There does now seem to be a whole new burgeoning genre of Hemingway inspired historical fiction, whether it is macho stuff like Dan Simmons "The Crook Factory" or the more romance inclined Erika Robuck's "Hemingway's Girl" (where 2nd wife Pauline Pfeiffer plays a large role). As a Hemingway nut I can only say the more the merrier.

[rivercityreading · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Hadley, Pauline, Martha and Mary were the four women who called themselves Mrs. Hemingway. In sections that stretch from Paris in the 1920′s through the Florida Keys to 1960′s Idaho, Naomi Wood relays the stories of the women who loved the infamous writer.

The magic of Mrs. Hemingway is Wood’s ability to make readers feel frustration and spite toward a mistress in one section, but feel empathy toward her as a wife in the next. While each of Hemingway’s wives is set apart with a distinct personality, the impact he has on all of their lives binds them together in a unique way.

“Ernest and the woman laugh as they shelter under the eave until the woman says something and looks ready to leave. Ernest watches her walk away, but his stare is one of accomplishment, as if, later in the night, he will come to possess what he appears to be losing now.”

Mrs. Hemingway‘s prose is stunningly effortless and moves with a lovely, constant cadence. Throughout the novel, Wood finds ways to bring new light to otherwise worn commentary on marriage, particularly in the section from the perspective of Mary as she grieves Hemingway’s death. Though bookstores are well stocked with “Mrs.” and “Wife” titles, Mrs. Hemingway is one that truly deserves to stand apart from the others.

Read more at rivercityreading.com

[etxgardener · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Hemingway’s wives are endlessly fascinating and in this book we get to hear from all four of them from the sainted Hadley, to the somewhat shrewish Fife, to feisty Martha, and then finally to docile Mary. Each thought their marriage would last forever, but each is betrayed by Hemingway’s roving eye, outsized ego, and finally, by the family nemesis – depression. An easy and interesting read.