In Mrs. Hemingway, Naomi Wood makes us share the intimacy of this giant of literature such that each of his wives could see it ... and support it.
- Mrs. Hemingway, Ernest, you tired me
In this novel, the imagination unfolds within the framework of a perfectly documented reality. The author, Naomi Wood, scoured the planet in the footsteps of Ernest Miller Hemingway, a Nobel Prize winner in literature in 1954, and prior to that, war correspondent (the First, where he was wounded, the Second, the disembarkation he liberated - he claimed - the bar of the Ritz in Paris - without forgetting the Spanish war.
Soldier, hunter, bullfighter in his hours, sensitive artist and tortured under his muscular appearance of alpha male, the women did not resist his insolent beauty. Those who, at their own risk and peril, shared the life of this tornado deserved to be consecrated a book.
- Mrs. Hemingway, three in a bed
… or almost. In France, in the 1920s, Ernest lived with his first wife, Hadley Richardson, a pretty redhead and gifted pianist with no future, love being his only score. So much so that when she learns of Ernie's affair with their friend Pauline Pfeiffer, known as Fife, she does not leave him and does not deny her friendship for the journalist who forms with them an inseparable trio and often sleeps at home.
One day, early in the morning, Hadley, opening one eye, sees Fife, next to their bed, hesitating to slip into it. When, later, Fife became the second wife of the author - finally famous, the publication of The sun also rises - their stainless friendship will continue, in a kind of love triangle incompletely assumed.
- Mrs. Hemingway, more desire than pleasure
After Hadley and Pauline, Ernest, who married his mistresses and was, therefore, intensively practicing divorce, married Martha Gellhorn.
She was a writer and a war correspondent (she was the first woman to practice this profession), and eventually grew tired of "being a footnote" in the life of her too famous man. That his wives tenderly called "The Pig", but Naomi Wood tells us: "According to Martha, he did not lack" appetite ", but he was not an outstanding lover. It is surprising, given the manhood he displayed, or ... precisely, not so surprising! "
- Mrs. Hemingway, farewell to tears
In 1946, he married Mary Welsh, who remained his wife until the end of his life, in 1961, to whom he himself ended with a rifle shot. Worn out at the age of 61 by a grueling life, diminished by two plane crashes in Africa, which he escaped in 1954 but which made him powerless, undermined by depression and bipolar disorder. Mary accompanied the author of the Old Man and the sea to the end, and farewell to arms, saving him from a first attempt at suicide, and then persuading himself that the second, successful, was only an accident.
Mrs. Hemingway by Naomi Wood, edited by Karine Degliame-O'Keeffe, ed. Quai Voltaire, € 21, released on May 11th.
