Book Review: The Broken Places by Russell Franklin
An eye-opening, compassionate and moving debut novel inspired by the life of Hemingway’s favourite child, who has often been misrepresented and misunderstood.
In 1931, Gregory Hemingway’s life begins in Kansas City, Missouri. The third and favourite child of an overbearing father, Greg is a paragon: a star athlete, a crack shot, bright and handsome and built like a pocket battleship.
In 2001, Gloria Hemingway’s life ends in a Miami women’s correctional institution. Complex and contradictory, radiant and resilient, it is a life that has flourished against the odds and been lived to the full.
Inspired by true events and spanning seventy years of the last century, this is the story of a miraculous existence, told with beauty and compassion. Transporting the reader back and forth in time, from Cuba to New York and Montana to Florida, The Broken Places explores what it means to grow up in the shadow of a man famous for his masculinity, to bear the weight of expectation and a tragic family legacy, and to finally step out into the light.
Published by Hachette Australia
Released 13 June 2023
My Thoughts:‘The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.’
– Ernest Hemingway
Ahh, Ernest. What a shadow of toxic masculinity to grow up under. Prior to reading this, I didn’t know much about Hemingway’s children, my reading has been more on the man himself and his wives, so this was a refreshing take on the man, although, I’ll say from the outset, I am no fonder of him for it.
‘Was it worth it? That ten years when the critics gave a damn? The handful of real stories and the two decent novels and the little line of prizes on the mantelpiece? Was it worth destroying all the living, breathing people who loved you? I hope so, because you don’t have anything else. Nothing.
You made me think it was my fault, you shit. Just to soothe your own guilt, or just to fuck me up more than I already was. You did that to your own son. Didn’t you feel anything? Watching me fall apart?’
– extract from a letter from Gregory to his father, Ernest Hemingway, the last one he ever wrote him
This is Russell Franklin’s debut novel and what an extraordinary piece of literary brilliance it is. I can only imagine the writer he is going to evolve into. This story of Gregory Hemingway is told with such brutal honesty yet delivered with sensitivity and grace. I have rarely read such intimate thoughts of turmoil and distress within a character as what Russell gives us with Gregory and his struggles with mental illness and gender identity. It’s a magnificent work of biographical historical fiction.
‘The work didn’t even matter any more. That was the truth. It was the man that mattered, the legend, and none of them even knew him. How wonderful he had been. What a colossal pig-headed shit. The reading public knew a character that Ernest Hemingway himself had created. A character that had wormed its way into his blood and started speaking through his mouth, puffing his chest outwards for the cameras, until the real man forgot that he had ever been anything else but this story he was telling. Maybe that was the sign of a truly great writer, that they can tell a story so convincingly that even they believe it.’
I read this novel within a day, all 390 pages of it, not something I do very often, let me say. But I couldn’t put it down and fortunately, I had begun it on the morning of a public holiday. Needless to say, I recommend this one. It gets six stars out of five, I loved it that much.
Thanks to the publisher for the review copy.
