The Novellas of Martha Gellhorn (Magill Book Reviews)

It is a boon to have in one volume a sampling of Martha Gellhorn’s best fiction, ranging from her Depression-era work, THE TROUBLE I’VE SEEN (1936), to THE WEATHER IN AFRICA (1978). The fiction is a product of Gellhorn’s mania for travel, her urge to see how other people live. The novellas in THE TROUBLE I’VE SEEN are first-hand accounts of the people she met while working for President Roosevelt’s Federal Emergency Relief Administration. Consequently the way people think and dress are noted with exquisite detail and sympathy but with little of the sentimentality that often mars the proletarian fiction of the 1930’s. The stories still seem fresh.

Gellhorn’s later fiction often focuses on the subject of marriage— indeed, her second book of novellas, TWO BY TWO (1958), takes the titles of its four stories from the marriage service—“For Better for Worse,”“For Richer for Poorer,”“In Sickness and in Health,”“Till Death Us Do Part.” Here she shows a wonderful ear for dialogue, revealing the joys and tensions of courtship and marriage through the exchanges of lovers, who often misunderstand the import of each other’s words.

The titles in her last book of novellas, THE WEATHER IN AFRICA, suggest the importance of climate and geography on human character: “On the Mountain,”“By the Sea,”“In the Highlands.” Gellhorn has lived different lives in her well-traveled career, but it is a tribute to her imagination that she is able to create whole worlds and independent personalities that transcend their roots in her biography.

Bibliography

Gellhorn, Martha. “The Real Thing.” Interview by Victoria Glendinning. Vogue 178 (April, 1988): 358-359, 398. One of Gellhorn’s rare interviews, conducted by a distinguished biographer.

Kert, Bernice. The Hemingway Women. New York: W. W. Norton, 1983. Contains a long, revealing chapter on Gellhorn, based on an interview with the subject.

Meyers, Jeffrey. Hemingway: A Biography. New York: Harper & Row, 1985. Contains the fullest account of Gellhorn’s years with Ernest Hemingway. Includes some discussion of Gellhorn’s fiction.

Rollyson, Carl. Nothing Ever Happens to the Brave: The Story of Martha Gellhorn. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990. The first full-length biography of Gellhorn, exploring both her work and her life. With extensive notes, a chronology of Gellhorn’s writing, and an index.