ARC won on Goodreads Giveaway

Maybe a reader has to be a Hemingway fan to enjoy this book, but I've sometimes found the artist interesting even if I don't give a fig for their art. Sometimes an author has even given me a new appreciation for someone I was previously ambivalent about. This didn't happen here, and I found the prose so flat and uninvolving that I bailed on page 207. It didn't seem worth the time and effort to continue.

It's a straightforward novelization of Hadley Hemingway's life with Ernest. Too straightforward. Most of the time, the research seems to dominate the storytelling, as if the author loves the subject so much that not a detail must be spared. It just felt a bit tedious to be told that Ernest reported for work in Toronto on September 10, and they heard on September 14 that Smyrna was burning in the Greco-Turkish war. There was too much of obsessing with "Who said what, and where" that the actual people in the story had all the dimension of a Wiki article. I didn't know what Hadley looked like (who can keep track of all those wives?), and it's not until quite a ways into the book that we're told of her facial features and hairstyle. It's as if the author assumes the reader is already right there beside her in the Hemingway knowledge and love. A paragraph about Hadley looking at the meats and vegetables at a Paris market is but an example of this saturation of minutae about the Hemingways and their travels and experiences. Riveting no doubt to a rabid fan, but for the casual reader, *yawn*.

There's lots of cameos by other Lost Generation members, but they have all the substance of cameos. I dunno, I think I'd much rather read non-fiction about somebody than a dull novel that reads like somebody took a biography and added dialogue to it. And that's what this one felt like. So I'd recommend it for the Hemingway fan who wants to read a book with moments where they can exclaim, "They've moved to Paris! Yay, we're at the part where Ernest and Gertrude Stein are falling out! Oh, and now they're meeting F. Scott and Zelda!"

Fine book for those who like that, but not for me. I'm not sure this is strict "literary fiction," more "literary crush fiction." And I like my historical fiction to be more meaty than this.

(Also, there are mega typos in this ARC. They'd better clean that up. It's Bach and Haydn, not Hayden.)