“I suspected that Hemingway, just like I do, would have had a serious problem living in this maddening twenty-first century world.” This line from this superb book got me thinking. Could I live in Cuba in the 20’s and 30’s with no Internet, no I-Pad, no smart phone, no 42” TV screen, no Spotify, no Sat-Nav, no rear-view screen in the car and none of the modern day accoutrements?

Are you kidding? In a heartbeat! I lived on the Algarve for four years. We had no TV, no car, no Internet and certainly
“I suspected that Hemingway, just like I do, would have had a serious problem living in this maddening twenty-first century world.” This line from this superb book got me thinking. Could I live in Cuba in the 20’s and 30’s with no Internet, no I-Pad, no smart phone, no 42” TV screen, no Spotify, no Sat-Nav, no rear-view screen in the car and none of the modern day accoutrements?

Are you kidding? In a heartbeat! I lived on the Algarve for four years. We had no TV, no car, no Internet and certainly no Spotify. But we had friends. And we were in shape. I scuba-dived a lot, went to the gym three times a week and drank with friends every night. The Portuguese people are affable and loyal, the food exquisite and the sunsets breathtaking. Hemingway would have loved it.

But onto this stunning book. It is a solid story. What else can I say? I actually had to stop after about 15% to research Hemingway’s life because, like most of us I suspect, I actually knew very little about him – except for the obligatory ‘Old Man and the Sea’ at school. And I’m sure a lot of us had a Hemingway novel in our curriculum. But the research was worth it and when later in the book we meet not only Hemingway’s ghost but also the soul’s of Gertrude Stein, Marlene Dietrich, Waldo Pierce, Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda, Alice Toklas and Sloppy Joe himself I actually knew a little bit about them and the part they’d played in Papa’s life.

It would be fair to say this is a book of two halves, but the story has a magic to it because as the reader shares wannabe author Jack Phelan’s struggles as to whether his book on the Hemingway experience should be fiction or truth, you can’t help but ask the same question yourself. Did all this really happen to Tom Winton, or is it all fiction? I still don’t know.

In the very first paragraph Winton expresses his ‘truth’ by stating, “I am now sure that in July of last year, I spent four days with Ernest Hemingway,” but not wanting to “labeled a kook” he opts to place this book firmly in the fiction category. So we’re left guessing right through the book. He describes his accident in such detail that this must surely have happened. Part of my job is to investigate construction site accidents, and I know a real accident when I read one. Winton’s / Phelan’s accident is so detailed and comprehensive – when your average author would have had his protagonist simply hit by a bus – that someone experienced in accidents, like myself, has to read this as truth.

So did this story actually happen? Did Tom Winton actually spend four days in a coma while his spirit spent time with Ernest Hemingway?

You decide?

…more