RaveThe Tampa Bay TimesAs problematic as Hemingway's unapologetic ambition and strained loyalties may be, Blume's purpose is not to vilify him but to demonstrate his mastery of the roman a clef. Hemingway's response to Loeb's pained query — why be so literal — may sound vindictive, but it explains his belief that a writer should write only about what he truly knows, the art of the personal he perfected as no writer before or after him ... Blume shows us how the author's careful process of selection and placement makes his debut novel an exemplum of autobiographical fiction ... Blume's achievement is doubly remarkable. As an award-winning journalist and cultural historian, she revisits the intense nightlife of Parisian bars and cafes and the explosive, rivalrous drama of Pamplona in a chiseled, precise style that would please the master himself. By filling in Hemingway's purposeful silences and omissions with the story's real-life people and actual events, she accentuates the author's artistic genius and enlarges our understanding of the novel's complex characters and themes. This is a book for novice Hemingway readers as well as veterans of his work.