Normally I avoid books with cursive writing on the cover or the word ‘love’ in the title (CHICK LIT) but for McLain I will make an exception. She has a way of getting right inside the minds of the women she writes about. Love and Ruin is her second novel based on the wives of Earnest Hemingway. The first, The Paris Wife, was slightly more engaging than this one, but Love and Ruin is still very fine. Hemingway’s third wife, Martha Gellhorn – famous as the only wife who ever left him- is a woman who would be much more comfortable born in modern times. She meets Hemingway in 1937, while covering the Spanish civil war as a journalist. He, quite disconcertingly, initially nicknames her ‘daughter’. Later they call one another ‘Rabbit’ (ewww). Her relationship with Henmingway is not actually the most interesting thing about her. She is a fascinating person in her own right, striding headlong into dangerous situations while all the time managing her own anxiety and fear and the psychological effect of the horrors she witnesses. The bits of the book about the landing at Normandy are very fine. Hemingway comes across as occasionally marvellous but more often a moody, needy, passive aggressive alcoholic. As her relationship with him deteriorates you want to grab her and urge her towards the door, but in the end she saves herself. Good on her. Apparently she refused to discuss Hemingway for the rest of her life after their relationship ended. And why would she, when there is so many more interesting bits in her life?
