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Columbia University academic Sharyn O’Halloran pursues her research interest in American politics and political methodology as the George Blumenthal Professor of Political Economy. Outside of her work, Sharyn O’Halloran lists reading historical fiction as one of her favorite pastimes.
Love and Ruin is the second novel by historical-fiction writer Paula McLain that centers on Ernest Hemingway’s legendary turbulent relationships. The book begins in the late 1930s in the midst of the Spanish Civil War, where Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn, a journalist and aspiring writer, travel to together to cover the fighting. The novel follows how the bond between the two writers intensifies from platonic friendship to a romantic relationship that eventually becomes Hemingway’s third marriage.
McLain used Gellhorn’s own words, harvested from the famed war correspondent’s personal letters and writings, to tell a fictionalized version of Gellhorn’s affair with the writer. The author describes Gellhorn’s difficulty reconciling her ambitions with the needs of her successful but antagonistic husband after the couple’s move to the idyllic setting of 1940s Havana.