Naomi Wood on the lives of Hemingway's wives
Author Naomi Wood spent three and a half years crafting her novel on the four wives of Ernest Hemingway. Told in four parts from the perspectives of his wives Hadley, Fife, Martha and Mary, "Mrs. Hemingway" is based on real love letters and telegrams from Ernest.
In an interview with the Historical Novel Society, Wood said she was surprised by the contents of the letters to his wives.
"To all four of them, they were full of baby-talk, just treacly with phrases like, 'Hi my little waxen kitten, from your little feather dog,' and I just found it so interesting that he was able to be like this with his wives and yet such an uber-masculine figure for the rest of the time," she said.
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'Women flocked to him and he was extremely charming,' she says. 'He was tremendously loving and lovely. Part of writing the book was exploring what four intelligent and beautiful women saw in him. He had to have had that charming side or else it would have just been unendurable. He could also be brutal.'
Although Wood shows the end of each relationship, she hopes she has still written a love story. 'It's really about the love that got them there in the first place,' she says. 'It's definitely not a boy-meets-girl romance, though, with the carousel of wives and mistresses whipping around.'
Wood joins The Daily Circuit to talk about her new novel. She will be at Magers and Quinn on May 29 at 7 p.m.
EXCERPT: "Mrs. Hemingway"