What’s shocking about this book is that it was written by a man. How, just how does Michael Cunningham get woman so profoundly right? The Hours gives us three different women in three different eras. One of them is Virginia Woolf. All three women are dealing with a profound sense of loss and longing. As Jack Nicholson’s […]
Top Five Books Based on the Life of Writers
The Taste of Sorrow by Jude Morgan
Published in the U.S. under the title Charlotte and Emily (which begs the question-what about Anne?) this beautiful novel takes you inside the cold, damp but deeply imaginative life of the Bronte sisters. It’s a compelling read for Bronte fans, best undertaken just before a visit to the parsonage in Haworth, Yorkshire where you can marvel […]
Z, a novel of Zelda Fitzgerald by Therese Anne Fowler
Ah, what a novel. It brings Zelda alive, before and after her relationship with F. Scott Fitzgerald, through all the Gatsby-like days, their glorious happiness and their mad sadness, into her final days and what-a-waste end. She’s a fascinating person in her own right, so troubled but so alive, and she deserves to have a […]
Mrs Hemingway by Naomi Wood
Ah, I loved this one. It traces Ernest Hemingway’s relationships with each of his four wives and paints a believable portrait of each of them and the times they lived through. All of the Mrs Hemingways are interesting, intelligent, memorable women in their own right. You have to wonder what they all see in him. […]
The Paris Wife by Paula McLain
Even if you’ve never been able to get through one of Earnest Hemingway’s novels (and I confess I haven’t), this book about his relationship with first wife Hadley Richardson still fascinates. Hadley is neither confident nor glamorous but she is kind and loyal, and she and her husband share an unshakeable belief in his brilliance. This […]