Valerie Hemingway is a freelance writer and editor.
“It is one of the best books on Hemingway that I have read, and it
has material to be found nowhere else on Ernest, Mary, and Greg
Hemingway.”
–NORMAN MAILER
“Valerie Hemingway is, with Hemingway’s only surviving son, the
last witness to have a precious, intimate knowledge of the family.
Her account of Ernest’s last years and of the tragic aftermath of
his suicide is absolutely riveting: essential reading for anyone
interested in the curse of fame.”
–JEFFREY MEYERS, author of Hemingway: A Biography
“This is the best, and best written, of all the reminiscences of
Ernest Hemingway, in part because its adventurous author, Valerie
Hemingway, is such an absorbing character herself. For once, the
great artist, the hero, and the fool seem to be the same person;
and the long list of fascinating people in his train are seen with
rare frankness.”
–TOM MCGUANE
“Running with the Bulls is hot to the touch. I was not a little
dumbfounded that Valerie Hemingway endured and survived the events
of her life to write this improbably skillful memoir that
frequently made me wish to climb a mountain and sit on a friendly
glacier. The author’s life with the Hemingways is utterly
compelling, and we must praise her for her gifts in giving us the
most lucid look yet written at this haunted family.”
–JIM HARRISON
“This is a startling, complicated book . . . fresh, trenchant and
intimate and revealing, yet sweet-spirited . . . told by a woman
with a wonderful voice of her own.”
–DAVID QUAMMEN
"It is one of the best books on Hemingway that I have read, and it
has material to be found nowhere else on Ernest, Mary, and Greg
Hemingway."
-NORMAN MAILER
"Valerie Hemingway is, with Hemingway's only surviving son, the
last witness to have a precious, intimate knowledge of the family.
Her account of Ernest's last years and of the tragic aftermath of
his suicide is absolutely riveting: essential reading for anyone
interested in the curse of fame."
-JEFFREY MEYERS, author of Hemingway: A Biography
"This is the best, and best written, of all the reminiscences of
Ernest Hemingway, in part because its adventurous author, Valerie
Hemingway, is such an absorbing character herself. For once, the
great artist, the hero, and the fool seem to be the same person;
and the long list of fascinating people in his train are seen with
rare frankness."
-TOM MCGUANE
"Running with the Bulls is hot to the touch. I was not a
little dumbfounded that Valerie Hemingway endured and survived the
events of her life to write this improbably skillful memoir that
frequently made me wish to climb a mountain and sit on a friendly
glacier. The author's life with the Hemingways is utterly
compelling, and we must praise her for her gifts in giving us the
most lucid look yet written at this haunted family."
-JIM HARRISON
"This is a startling, complicated book . . . fresh, trenchant and
intimate and revealing, yet sweet-spirited . . . told by a woman
with a wonderful voice of her own."
-DAVID QUAMMEN
Valerie Hemingway was a 19-year-old Dubliner named Valerie Danby-Smith when she first encountered Ernest Hemingway in Spain in 1959. Having attempted to interview the literary giant for the Irish Times, she found herself sucked into his entourage. Thus began her long association with the doomed Hemingway family (which she joined officially when she married Hemingway's estranged son Gregory years after Hemingway's death). Ernest Hemingway, openly infatuated with the young Valerie, soon persuaded her to become his personal secretary and took her on a nostalgic driving tour of his old haunts in Provence and Paris. His fourth wife, Mary Welsh, a shrewd former newswoman, tolerated this arrangement-by all accounts a platonic one-and she and Valerie even became firm friends. But as Hemingway's health failed, the depressed writer began to confide in Valerie his desire to kill himself. When he succeeded, in 1961, Valerie, employed by Newsweek, flew to Mary's side and helped her pack up the house in Cuba. Valerie spent the following four years sorting through Hemingway's papers at Mary's behest. An account of her stressful marriage to the manic-depressive cross-dressing physician Gregory Hemingway concludes a memoir that is vividly written and rich in atmosphere and anecdote, although it lacks a memorable or compelling portrait of Ernest Hemingway himself. Agent, Simon Green for POM Inc. (On sale Oct. 26) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
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