Ernest Hemingway's rescuing angel was Hadley Richardson, his first wife. She was eight years older than he was, she was tough and sophisticated, frugal and naive. She believed completely and unfailingly, that Hemingway was a great writer. She never waivered from her belief.
This book is mostly written from Hadley's point of view, with short chapters interspersed with Ernest's thoughts. She meets Hemingway shortly after he returns from WWI, a depressed and wounded veteran. Ernest, against his family's wishes, marries Hadley and the two leave for Paris to "plunge headlong into the most active literary scene on the planet". They mingle and socialize with novelist Sherwood Anderson, poet Ezra Pound, activist Gertrude Stein, novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald. Hadley struggles "...with her roles as a woman - wife, lover, muse, friend and mother..." We know that Hemingway used her as his sounding board as he framed his own ideas, and that "...had she not married him, no novelist would be telling her story." or possibly Hemingway's story either! She was his rock, and his last novel, "A Moveable Feast" is her first real voice, in all his fiction.
The fast paced, flapper lifestyle, where there is always ..."enough drink to fill an ocean" is fine until the Hemingways' son is born and Hadley realizes "bohemian expatriates don't much like babies. And they don't like fidelity either." We all know how Hemingway's life ended and his legacy, especially "The Sun Also Rises". What I didn't know was how Hadley, then later Pauline Pfeifer, and presumably many other women, were necessary to always prop him up and stroke his huge ego. Some women just love a 'bad boy'.
This was not light reading, but as always, I loved the history and felt I was living in the life and times of a young Ernest Hemingway.
- Like Family
- A Ticket to Ride
Before I Go to Sleep - S. J. Watson
Well, this is a summer thriller to keep you reading into the night! It is a great debut novel.
Christine wakes up every morning - in a strange bed, with a strange man. When she looks in the bathroom mirror she sees an unfamiliar, middle aged face. Her hands are not her own, they are her mother's.
Ben, her husband, must tell her everyday that she is forty seven, that he is her husband and that she had a terrible accident twenty years ago. She cannot remember her past and doesn't have the ability to form new memories. She can only remember what happens today, and as she sleeps through the night, she loses it all. She must start back at zero every morning!
There are some minor inconsistencies in the novel - for example, she wonders why there are no photos of Christmas. (How does she remember there is such a thing as Christmas?) She remembers Dr Nash, who is secretly working with Christine - but to his own ends. He wants to present a paper on her uniqueness - that she can transfer things from short term to long term storage in her brain, but she can't retain them. This type of amnesia is virtually unknown.
What Christine does have is the ability to distinguish emotions - lying, fear, aggression, nervousness, - in the words spoken and the body language. Because she has no context for the conversation, she hears and sees things the rest of us overlook. But can she trust herself? The one person she can trust, her husband Ben, is only telling her part of her story. Why? To shelter her, as he admits?
When she finds a note to herself - DO NOT TRUST BEN - she has no grounding, no footing, no memories to guide her. It is an intricate and gripping tale.
Who Knew?
Anterograde amnesia is the loss of the ability to create new memories after the event that caused the amnesia. Retrograde amnesia is where memories created prior to the event are lost. Both CAN occur in the same patient.
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