During the Spanish Civil War, Madrid's Hotel Florida was a meeting point for war correspondents, press officers and foreign intellectuals. Amanda Vaill (Everybody Was So Young) uses the hotel as a focal point to examine the war through the lives of three men and three women. These six individuals--all leftists of various stripes and pedigrees, converging on Spain from all over Europe and the U.S.--allow Vaill to range freely through the history of the war, which raged from 1936 to 1939.
Vaill follows her subjects chronologically, shifting locations through Francisco Franco's rebellion against the Popular Front government and the events that led up to the Spanish Civil War. Arturo Barea of Madrid serves as a censor for the Propaganda Department, finding his leftist politics and commitment to truth well matched by his new assistant Ilsa Kulcsar, who comes from an Austrian resistance cell and speaks many languages. Meanwhile, Ernest Hemingway feels stifled in Key West; a new war to cover provides him with an excuse to get away from his wife and find fresh material to revive his stagnant writing. (The attractive young journalist he's just met, Martha Gellhorn, is also eager to get to Spain.) Finally, a young man named Endre Friedmann is exuberantly pursuing his passion for photography in Paris when he meets the charming Gerta Pohorylle. They set off for Spain together with their ideals on their sleeves. Taking new names--Robert Capa and Gerda Taro--they will find fame and love and change the face of war photography forever. One of them will die on Spanish soil.
In addition to explaining the complexities of the Spanish Civil War, Hotel Florida lives up to its grand subtitle. Vaill examines the meaning of truth as conceived by each of her six players--writer, journalist, translator, censor, press officer, photographer. Their romances, all born of war, and the deaths to which they bear witness bring emotion and heartbreak. Buttressed by plentiful research, Vaill's prose exhibits touches of Hemingway's own writing style and a gift for narrative that keeps Hotel Florida accessible and engaging. --Julia Jenkins
Shelf Talker: Vaill's story of three love affairs, set against the Spanish Civil War, yields a nuanced perspective on war journalism and romance.