From New York Times bestselling author Meg Waite Clayton comes a riveting novel based on one of the most volatile and intoxicating real-life love affairs of the twentieth century.

Key West, 1936. Headstrong, accomplished journalist Martha Gellhorn is confident with words but less so with men when she meets disheveled literary titan Ernest Hemingway in a dive bar. Their friendship - forged over writing, talk, and family dinners - flourishes into something undeniable in Madrid while they’re covering the Spanish Civil War.

Martha reveres him. The very married Hemingway is taken with Martha - her beauty, her ambition, and her fearless spirit. And as Hemingway tells her, the most powerful love stories are always set against the fury of war. The risks are so much greater. They’re made for each other.

With their romance unfolding as they travel the globe, Martha establishes herself as one of the world’s foremost war correspondents, and Hemingway begins the novel that will win him the Nobel Prize for Literature. Beautiful Exiles is a stirring story of lovers and rivals, of the breathless attraction to power and fame, and of one woman - ahead of her time - claiming her own identity from the wreckage of love.

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Product details

Listening Length	10 hours and 50 minutes
Author	Meg Waite Clayton
Narrator	Kirsten Potter
Whispersync for Voice	Ready
Audible.com.au Release Date	01 August 2018
Publisher	Brilliance Audio
Program Type	Audiobook
Version	Unabridged
Language	English
ASIN	B07DD2C3ZM
Best Sellers Rank	50,522 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals) 3,162 in Historical Fiction (Audible Books & Originals) 15,246 in Historical Fiction (Books)

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Angart

“A Bitchy, selfish, scum business of a tale!’

Reviewed in Australia on 1 December 2018

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This book recounts the life and relationship of Ernest Hemmingway and the woman who became his third wife, Martha Gelhorn. It is a work of fiction, told in the first person, by Martha. Set in the 1930’s against a backdrop of turbulent world events, this book is both fascinating, informative and very well written. For example, Martha says of Ernest’s writing; “Ernest used words - spare and flowing, poetic - that there was and hard to shake off. Your writing was a different thing after you read Hemmingway, even if you didn’t want it to be. His dialogue left me in crazy awe and I told him that, I praised that.”
This book tells us a lot about the process of writing as both central characters labour over their typewriters. We also learn a lot about their travels and adventures as they ricochet from place to place. One minute Florida, then Spain, Cuba, Idaho, London, Paris etc etc. My favourite escapade was their pre revolution, trip to China.
My only criticism, is that it is hard to empathise or even like Martha and Ernest. They are just not nice people. He was a boozey, bullying womaniser and she was a tough marriage breaker and the pair were always fighting. At one point Ernest asks Martha to “give up the bitchy, selfish scum business and be a wife.” (She was not very feminine.) In the end Ernest told Martha that he “no longer wanted his life smashed up by heartless, carelessness, ambition and selfishness.” That about sums up the pair of them.
This is a story about two spoilt, self centred individuals who smashed their way through life and were never going to be compatible, for long.
This is a great read, if rather harrowing at times. But I enjoyed reading it because as the author puts it so succinctly,, “It felt so good, the sentences connecting towards something that might become a story worth reading.”

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Vicuña

Absolutely breathtaking fictional account of Gellhorn and Hemingway's life together

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 2 July 2018

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Beautiful Exiles

This is a truly astonishing story in every sense. It tells of the relationship between Martha Gellhorn and Ernest Hemingway from Martha's perspective. Much has been written about Hemingway, particularly his womanising and drinking. I've read a book about his wives,so knew a little about this relationship, but Beautiful Exiles really gets to the heart of these extraordinary individuals and their friends.

It's linear, starting in 1936 when the two first meet and ends in Paris in 1944. The narrative is split into chapters which cover numerous key events and places. I really enjoyed the extracts set at Finça Vigia, Cuba, where they spent so much time relaxing, entertaining, writing and occasionally fighting.

Meg Waite Clayton has really captured places, people and time and it reads as if you're a fly on the wall watching and listening. It's a compelling read; their various relationships with others were often troubled and there's real insight into Martha's work and travels as a journalist and war correspondent. The scope of the book includes the Spanish Civil War as well as WWll. Their involvement often involved serious personal discomfort and danger, but the reader quickly understands who suffered the most.

Although a work of fiction, the research is clearly meticulous and extensive. A few chapters are based on contemporaneous accounts of events, giving the story authenticity. I was really impressed by the bibliography and source material references at the end of the book. It's given me new books and sources to follow up.All in all, this is an exhilarating and gripping read which I really enjoyed.

23 people found this helpful

Pamela Scott

A cracking read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 22 July 2018

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I’d never heard of Martha Gellhorn until I read this book. I knew of Hemmingway though. Who doesn’t. Though I’ve only read one of his books, The Old Man and The Sea. I was riveted by this book which shines a light on a famous (or father infamous) marriage. I thought Martha was great. She’s feisty, strong, independent and more than a match for boozy Hemmingway. She was more tolerant than I could have been in her books. Hemmingway’s life is almost more infamous than his writing, especially his boozing. The author does a cracking job of bringing this larger than life character to life. He’s a drunkard and a bully and a pig but you sort of love him as well. I found the book terrible sad towards the end as Martha is forced to do some soul-searching and decide to do what’s right for her.

6 people found this helpful

JC of MK

So well researched ...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 2 August 2018

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A huge amount of research went into this novel. That is its great strength and, perhaps, its weakness too. Clayton writes very well, but the need to include all the researched facts tends to make the book a bit breathless. It has very little, if any, variation in pace or intensity. Gellhorn visited Dachau and by all accounts elsewhere it had a major effect on her; here it is covered as a bald statement in one passing sentence where she feels the visit justified her being a war correspondent. But then that is how almost every incident and event is treated - as just another dam thing after another.

Gellhorn comes across as naive and really rather unpleasant - she just never seems to grow up! Hemingway comes across as vile!

In spite of all this I found the book interesting enough to finish. If you are interested in Gellhorn and Hemingway (as I was after reading Laura Feigel's "The Bitter Taste of Victory" - very highly recommended!) it is worth reading.

2 people found this helpful

Susanne

Didn't finish it

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 17 September 2018

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I was really disappointed in the way Gellhorn spent more time worrying about what Ernest thought about life than she did with her own. More time was spent cramming as many of the nicknames they had for each other than showing the reader what an incredible individual she was.

I gave up midway as the writing was frequently clunky and without being able to be interested in the characters, I hopped over to Wikipedia to get the rest of the story instead.

Shame.

2 people found this helpful

GMac

Serendipitous Delight

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 22 April 2020

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Not the sort of book I normally read but I was so glad I came across it. It gripped me from start to finish and greatly expanded what little I knew about Hemingway. The true hero of the book is of course Martha Gellhorn as a war correspondent, a writer and a human being. She clearly loved Hemingway even if he was a complete **** a lot of the time. I fully intend to check out her books.

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