TIMOTHY J. CHRISTIAN
Reviews
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Hilary Justice,
Hemingway Scholar in Residence
John F. Kennedy Museum and Archives, in
the Hemingway Review, Spring, 2023
In Hemingway's Widow, Christian brilliantly fills this long-empty gap, presenting readers with lucid prose; meticulous research; where warranted, cogent argument; where pertinent, engagement with recent scholarship; and over 50 pages of endnotes. One couldn't wish for a better-researched, more readable book; Hemingway's Widow sets a new gold-standard in our understanding of Mary Hemingway's life and legacy.
Harry R. Stoneback, Distinguished Professor Emeritus The State University of New York, President (past): The Ernest Hemingway Foundation & Society
“Illuminating. I cannot imagine any biographer navigating these waters better than Timothy Christian has done in these pages. And I hope every student of Hemingway will pay close attention and adjust accordingly their views of Carlos Baker’s biography of Hemingway. Again, I say this book is a stunning achievement. It is the custom to say that this volume belongs on the bookshelf of every scholar and student and fan of Hemingway. And it does. This includes Hemingway aficionados, who will appreciate Timothy Christian’s superb skills in biography. This is the Hemingway book we’ve all been waiting for so long.”
Steve Paul,
author of Hemingway at Eighteen,
President of
Biographer's International Organization
"Living with Hemingway could be downright treacherous, as the journalist Mary Welsh would learn even before becoming the great writer’s fourth and last wife. In this fast-paced, drama-packed, and full-bodied biography, Timothy Christian has given us the absolute true gem of a woman who sacrificed her own identity while navigating a partnership forged by careless love and deep darkness. Drawn from Mary Hemingway’s journals and other previously untapped sources, Hemingway’s Widow adds valuable new dimensions and insights to a story we thought we already knew.”
Susan Buckley,
author of Eating with Peter
Mary's friend
"Bravo to Tim Christian for creating a portrait of my friend Mary Hemingway that at last shows her for the complex person she was—so much more than an appendage of 'the great man.' The author's astonishingly deep research into the vast archive of letters, journals, memoirs, and interviews allows him to put the fascinated reader into Mary's thoughts and feelings as she navigated the sometimes glamourous and often treacherous shoals of life with Ernest. This is a story that needed to be told, and we are fortunate that Tim Christian has told it so frankly, so sympathetically, and so compellingly."
Carl Rollyson,
the "Dean of American Biographers,"
The New Criterion
"More than any other biographer or historian so far, Christian shows what a marvel Mary Welsh was to Hemingway in wartime London. Petite and perky, a shrewd assessor of male vanity and pretensions, this down-to-earth Midwesterner obtained plum assignments from newspapers and magazines and sized up the military men who befriended and courted her.”
Wayne Catan,
The Minneapolis Star Tribune
"A vivid portrayal of Mary Walsh Hemingway. Christian masterfully transports readers to Picasso's studio in Paris and to the Ritz Bar where the couple drank with Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. Christian regales readers with stories from around the world, revealing the life of one of the most iconic literary couples. He also chronicles Mary's illustrious journalism career and her meetings with world leaders such as Fidel Castro and John F. Kennedy, setting the record straight that Martha Gellhorn was not the only respected reporter whom Hemingway married."
Carol Sklenicka,
author of 'Raymond Carver: A Writer's Life' and 'Alice Adams: Portrait of a Writer'
"Timothy Christian has spent years researching Mary's life across continents and every archive, including troves of information that no one else has tapped. To this task, he brought a sympathetic attachment to the woman behind the Hemingway myth. He has turned up truly fresh and significant information about Mary herself and her life before Ernest, about the courtship and sexual predilections of the couple, and about Ernest's suicide. While to some extent, this story will compromise the myth of the great macho man that was important to Hemingway—a myth that Mary helped craft and maintain—it will ultimately provide a fuller understanding of an American icon and the lives he touched. Refreshingly, Christian does not view Mary as a victim, despite Ernest's callous and violent treatment of the talented journalist who spent her prime years with the aging and difficult master. Christian gives us Mary, a tiny and fearless dynamo, a woman of skill and heart, calculation and vulnerability, who knew exactly what she was getting into when she married Ernest—and played her hands as best as she could, even as her choices narrowed."
Linda Patterson Miller, Author of Letters from the Lost Generation and Head of the Editorial Board, The Hemingway Letters Project
"Sixty years after Hemingway's death, Christian sets the record straight regarding Mary Hemingway's complex relationship with Hemingway and his art during and after his final years. Often stereotyped as accepting a sometimes abusive relationship, Mary comes powerfully to life in this intricately nuanced and mesmerizing biographical tour de force. Honest, unafraid, and compelling, Christian finally gives us the true gen."
Nick Reynolds,
author of the New York Times bestseller Writer, Sailor, Soldier, Spy: Ernest Hemingway's Secret Adventures, 1935-1961
"This compelling book transported me back to Hemingway’s world, except this time his fourth and last wife Mary was guiding the way. Hemingway aficionados will enjoy the journey. Hemingway scholars will appreciate the detail, including some new revelations, and the fresh analysis of her life and legacy. Bottom line: an important book that fills a long-standing gap and is a pleasure to read."
Roberta Silman,
The Arts Fuse
“We now have a book that virtually closes the circle on Hemingway’s women, a biography that will be treasured by the author’s fans and scholars. Scenes of London during World War II are exciting and interesting as we see Mary grow to become a respected reporter, no mean task for a woman at that time. Christian presents a vivid picture, plunging the reader into their daily life, the visits from friends and frenemies, Ernest’s work on The Old Man and the Seaand Mary’s assistance. We feel Mary’s claustrophobia when Ernest becomes cruel and abusive; we are privy to their sexual games, we revel in their travels to Africa and Europe, and we wince watching Mary’s unbelievable patience when Ernest ‘falls in love’ with an Italian woman young enough to be his grandchild.”—
... level-headed ... Hemingway-heads will find much to pore over here, but no one comes out of it well ... Christian does an admirable job of painting a vivid picture of Welsh in the early years of her life ... despite Christian’s valiant attempt, she cannot be pulled out of Ernest Hemingway’s long shadow
Mary Welsh is a fascinating subject for a biography. Mary Hemingway, though she dominates this book, is less so. Christian’s portrait of an intelligent, attractive, and accomplished woman bullied and abused by the man she loved and cared for swiftly becomes both unrelenting and distressing despite being well-written. I wish for her sake that Mary had been married to a good man instead of a great one. She was too generous to Hemingway while he lived and too protective of him after his death, often to her own detriment in both cases. When Mary told Fallaci, “Writers are lonely persons, even when they love and are loved,” surely she spoke not only about Hemingway but also for herself.
Christian’s meticulous archival research, interviews with people who knew Mary Hemingway, and quotes from her memoir, How It Was, strive to paint an honest portrait and fresh analysis of her complex life ... The initial five chapters, which focus only on Mary, prove the most insightful and are an enchanting read about the petite blonde’s bold spirit ... Christian creates sympathy for her. After Hemingway’s death, the book skews off course into a series of separate essays as Mary tenaciously protects his legacy.
Author Timothy Christian has written an extremely well-researched and lucid biography that reads like a novel and will entertain as well as educate. In a preface that is worth the price of the book itself, eminent Hemingway scholar H.R. Stoneback of the State University of New York touts Christian’s “superb skills as a heavy equipment operator in biography” and labels this work “the Hemingway book we’ve all been waiting for so long.”
In it, through Mary, we see Hemingway as an adventurous, if at times somewhat bloviating, war correspondent, as the beloved symbol of an already famous expatriate writer in Cuba and as an abusive but adoring husband. With her, we get to visit Paris, run with the bulls in Spain, hunt for wild beasts in Africa, live in the lush tropics and glittering high mountains and fish for trophy Marlin in the Gulf Stream.
“Hemingway’s Widow” is a compelling true story that will give you a different perspective of what many have called America’s all-time greatest writer.
Drawing on extensive research, Christian paints a portrait of a married couple who, whatever their difficulties, ultimately found in each other a rare thing: intimate understanding. With his background as a law professor, including at the University of Alberta, Christian carefully presents his evidence, especially in a compelling analysis of how Mary handled her role as the preserver of Ernest’s legacy. meticulous archival research, interviews with people who knew Mary Hemingway, and quotes from her memoir, How It Was, strive to paint an honest portrait and fresh analysis of her complex life ... The initial five chapters, which focus only on Mary, prove the most insightful and are an enchanting read about the petite blonde’s bold spirit ... Christian creates sympathy for her. After Hemingway’s death, the book skews off course into a series of separate essays as Mary tenaciously protects his legacy.