I learned a lot about that time period and place and Hemingway's personality. The fictional love story that Robuck weaves in was very tender with some unexpected twists.
How I wanted to love this book, as I've read two others by the author that did a better job of transporting me to their respective eras. The story was fine, and she does a nice job of weaving historical info into the tale, but the dialogue, vague descriptions, and overall tone did nothing to evoke the 1930s, which was disappointing. I was eager to lose myself in Hemingway's Key West, but it takes more than insertion of timely facts to accomplish that. Had the characters possessed mannerisms & speech patterns of the time, had there been some clothing details stuck in here and there, it would have been a much more satisfying read. One small thing really bugged me: Marianna is 20 (I think), so her parents would have been married at least 20 years, thus no later than 1915. At one point, Marianna looks at a photo of her newlywed parents, mother wearing a yellow flowered dress, which is still in the closet. She decides to wear this dress on a date; what woman in 1935 is going to go out in an Edwardian dress, other than to a costume party? This sort of disregard for historic details did a lot to remove me from the world of the story.
