Hemingway Leaving #2 and, Eventually, #3--Beautiful Exiles

Beautiful Exiles by Meg Waite Clayton
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Don't know why but this story did not resonate with me. Perhaps the fact that I never liked Hemingway's life or his writing made me less receptive to his story, even fictionalized. Gellhorn was almost fearless in her pursuit of her career as a war correspondent. He, on the other hand, avoided, as much as possible the real experience and instead wrote from the tales of others who had experienced battle and purported them to be his own exploits. I guess he wrote good fiction but the fact he claimed the reality as his own doesn't sit well.
A man of his time, he dominated and took control as much as possible of his wives and Gellhorn was no exception. The only one who got the better of him was his second wife who had the money and clout to cause his problems. Gellhorn, who had problems with her male relationships--choosing married men often and finding sex painful always--seemed to hero worship this drunken womanizer. It came as no surprise that the marriage failed. It was boring to trudge through its ups and downs --constantly repetitious --to its inevitable demise. I kept checking to see how many more pages there were til the end.

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