THE READING JOURNEY

Over the last week I’ve been on a reading journey.

This is a bit different to my usual way of doing things, my reading material at times jumps all over the place, you could say reading is a passion in my life.

As I’ve said time and again, the more you read, the better the writer you’ll be.

But I digress, back to my recent reading journey.

Hadley Richardson 
  hemingwayhouse.com

Paula McLain is an amazing author, her treatment and style when descripting people and places is extraordinary.

“The Paris Wife.”  Fictionalised history has always been a winner, and from the first sentence; I was hooked.

The novel fictionalises the life of Hadley Richardson, the first wife of Ernst Hemingway, who were married in September 1921, and has forever changed my view of Ernst Hemingway.

What an emotional rollercoaster their marriage recreated against the back drop of 1920’s Paris, and France in general. There came a tragic separation and divorce, that Hemingway regretted for the rest of his life.

Travelling on to “Love & Run” set against the backdrops of Spain, Cuba, England, and Europe. 

Martha Gellhorn, a pioneering war correspondent, and Hemingway's third wife. 

Gellhorn wrote about the effects of the Great Depression and the ravages of war on the disadvantage and relocated. A style of journalism  not seen at the time, covering Spain, France, Czechoslovakia, and Finland.

Martha Gellhorn
explorethearchive.com

Gellhorn and Hemingway covered the Spanish Civil War together, and while away started a romantic relationship.

Gellhorn’s relationship with Hemingway was always rocky, she was quite career orientated, and Hemingway often resented the competition with his own career.

Besides the torturous relationships of  Hemingway and his wives is the richness of Paula McLain’s writing, you feel every emotion along the way, but its also her rich depiction of the places these couples lived, she artfully brings Paris, Cuba, 

Spain, and London alive with colour and energy.

On a fictional historical roll. I picked up “Circling the Sun” set in Africa, my dream travel destination. McLain recreates the life of Beryl Markham, racehorse trainer and breeder, adventurer and aviator. An amazingly remarkable woman.

Beryl Markham (nee Clutterbuck) was born in 1901 England, moving with her father to Africa as a child.

In 1942 Martha Gellhorn interviewed Beryl about her autobiography “West With The Nigh.”

Of course, I could not move past this connection, and travelled onto Markham’s autobiography.

Beryl’s prose is poetry in motion, walking along side her into the  African countryside. with all the love

Beryl Markham
brittanica.com

and passion she has, as she considered her native country.

The people she knew are all there in vivid glory, large as life are, Bror Blixen, Isak Dinesen, and Denys Finch Hatton.

Beryl Markham’s depiction of Africa and her lifelong tribal friendships are much richer than Karen Blixen’s reedition in “Out of Africa.”

These four books could lead me anywhere. Rich and exciting, are the stories of strong women in times when women had to be tough to get what they wanted. 

What I’m getting at is this journey was an excellent experience of two different examples of writing, different ways of treating the telling of history.