A Harper's Bazaar and Stylist Best Book of 2014
"Magnetic" The New York Times Book Review
"Sublime." The Bookseller
"So beautifully written, and evocative, that I could not put it down until the last page." Jojo Moyes
In the dazzling summer of 1926, Ernest Hemingway and his wife Hadley travel from their home in Paris to a villa in the south of France. They swim, play bridge and drink gin. But wherever they go they are accompanied by the glamorous and irrepressible Fife. Fife is Hadley's best friend. She is also Ernest's lover.
Hadley is the first Mrs. Hemingway, but neither she nor Fife will be the last. Over the ensuing decades, Ernest's literary career will blaze a trail, but his marriages will be ignited by passion and deceit. Four extraordinary women will learn what it means to love the most famous writer of his generation, and each will be forced to ask herself how far she will go to remain his wife...
Luminous and intoxicating, Mrs. Hemingway portrays real lives with rare intimacy and plumbs the depths of the human heart.
PRAISE FOR MRS HEMINGWAY
"Luminous, intoxicating ... A passionate novel based on real lives, full of betrayals and moments of heartbreaking intimacy as Wood gives four remarkable women star billing."
Marie Claire
"An absorbing, tender glimpse inside the lives of those in Hemingway's inner circle." Booklist
"Exquisitely written, the Mrs. Hemingways finally have their say in this beautiful novel." Stylist Magazine
"A beautiful read and an amazing insight into the life of the man . . . superb." Red
"Very occasionally, a piece of fiction based on facts is so good that I catch myself thinking: 'Oh, so that's how it really was.' Wood achieves this in this breathtakingly good look at the lives of Ernest Hemingway's four wives . . . . Sublime." The Bookseller
Industry Reviews
'This is a wonderful book: carefully written, richly imagined and emotionally wise ... It is all meticulously researched, but, as in the best of Penelope Fitzgerald, the research is worn lightly and never threatens to dominate ... Even the wellknown details of Hemingway's life are made fresh, given a new significance ... Mrs. Hemingway feels truer than most of the biographies, and more real than many novels. Wood's method is an effective way of getting to grips with the central enigma: Hemingway himself, a man tortured by masculinity. But it is also a sensitive and moving evocation of those women he depended on, who his life often overshadowed'
Daily Telegraph
'It takes an unusual skill to keep someone reading a story to which they think they already know the ending. But Mrs. Hemingway is so beautifully written, and evocative, that I could not put it down until the last page'
Jojo Moyes, author of Me Before You
'Well researched, cleverly done ... But the pleasures of Mrs Hemingway are not purely architectural. Controlled modulations of voice offer delightfully bald observation and, with free indirect discourse, deft characterisation Literary Review Wood weaves real life with fiction in this vivid portrait of Hemingway's four wives'
The Observer
