Though based on the Hemingway novel published 25 years after his death, Hemingway’s Garden of Eden feels more like the result of an ungodly alliance between Harlequin house writers and the cut-and-paste masterminds at A&E Biography . Hemingway worked on the novel from 1946 until his death, leaving its 200,000 words unpublished. The story is roughly autobiographical, derived in part from to his second marriage (to wealthy Pauline Pfeiffer), but allusions to Fitzgerald and his wife, Zelda, whom Hemingway reviled, seem to figure as well. As adapted by former Paris Review editor James Scott Linville and directed by John Irwin, The Garden of Eden suggests the bad first novel that Hemingway never wrote. There’s a reason This Side Of Paradise never made it to the screen.
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REVIEW: Garden of Eden Isn’t Just Lesser Hemingway; It’s the Worst of Him
