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A review by saareman
Hemingway's Girl by Erika Robuck
5.0
As a bit of a Hemingway nut, I can report that this was a totally fun read and that author Erika Robuck stays as true as she possibly can to the various sources that she consulted to build fictional characterizations of Ernest Hemingway, Pauline Pfeiffer and their various family such as Ginnie Pfeiffer and the young Bumby, Patrick and Gregory Hemingway and friends such as John and Katy Dos Passos, Sara Murphy and others.
"Hemingway's Girl" is primarily set in the summer of 1935 in Key West, Florida at a time while Hemingway was writing "Green Hills of Africa" and the World War I "Bonus Army" veterans were building the Florida Keys Overseas Highway. The main fictional character is 19-year-old Mariella Bennett, of mixed American-Cuban parentage, who goes to work for the Hemingways as a housemaid at their Key West home and observes and participates in their lives. The other main fictional character is WW1 veteran Gavin Murray who, while working on the highway building, also visits Key West to earn side-money as a boxer. It is at one of these informal boxing matches that the characters interact with Hemingway for the first time and the story kicks off from there and hits all the right notes along the way to its dramatic two-fold finish, first with the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 and then with the well-known news of the morning on July 2, 1961.
Robuck makes all the right touchstones and neatly leaves several of them unexpanded in a sort of nod and a wink to Hemingwayphiles. For instance, Hemingway's remark "Did I ever tell you how I became a Catholic?" is left unanswered, but is presumably based on the A.E. Hotchner story in "Papa Hemingway" about Hemingway praying for a return of his virility.
I thoroughly enjoyed this and look forward to reading more of Robuck. I understand her next book is about Zelda Fitzgerald and I hope there is further "lost generation"-related fiction yet to come.
"Hemingway's Girl" is primarily set in the summer of 1935 in Key West, Florida at a time while Hemingway was writing "Green Hills of Africa" and the World War I "Bonus Army" veterans were building the Florida Keys Overseas Highway. The main fictional character is 19-year-old Mariella Bennett, of mixed American-Cuban parentage, who goes to work for the Hemingways as a housemaid at their Key West home and observes and participates in their lives. The other main fictional character is WW1 veteran Gavin Murray who, while working on the highway building, also visits Key West to earn side-money as a boxer. It is at one of these informal boxing matches that the characters interact with Hemingway for the first time and the story kicks off from there and hits all the right notes along the way to its dramatic two-fold finish, first with the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 and then with the well-known news of the morning on July 2, 1961.
Robuck makes all the right touchstones and neatly leaves several of them unexpanded in a sort of nod and a wink to Hemingwayphiles. For instance, Hemingway's remark "Did I ever tell you how I became a Catholic?" is left unanswered, but is presumably based on the A.E. Hotchner story in "Papa Hemingway" about Hemingway praying for a return of his virility.
I thoroughly enjoyed this and look forward to reading more of Robuck. I understand her next book is about Zelda Fitzgerald and I hope there is further "lost generation"-related fiction yet to come.