"Love and Ruin" by Paula McLain

I read McLain's The Paris Wife a few years back and really enjoyed it. So what could be better than a book about another one of Hemingway's doomed marriages by the same author, right? 

Unfortunately I wasn't as entranced by this one. Personally, the main issue was that Martha Gellhorn never became real to me. Maybe this was my fault; maybe I didn't identify with her drive to experience war zones (admittedly, that drive goes against all my instincts and desires). Gellhorn seemed like a tough cookie, and somehow that didn't come through naturally on the pages; again, maybe my fault because she is so different from me? Or maybe I was thrown off by this statement on the colophon: " . . . the situations, incidents and dialogues . . . are entirely fictional and are not intended to depict actual events." I mean, yeah, it's historical fiction, and I'm sure that was a necessary disclaimer, but it was difficult to pay no attention to the man behind the curtain after reading that.  

Reading about Hemingway through the eyes of his wives, however, is pretty intriguing. I find myself contemplating buying books about his second and fourth marriages. A quick search suggests perhaps Unbelievable Happiness and Final Sorrow: The Hemingway-Pfeiffer Marriage by Ruth Hawkins, which I assume is more historical than fiction, and How It Was which was actually written by Hemingway's fourth and final wife.