Quick Take
- Narration: Jonathan Davis brings a measured intensity to Blume’s journalistic narrative, handling the period atmosphere and multiple character voices with assured skill.
- Themes: Literary ambition and personal betrayal, the construction of a writerly persona, the Lost Generation’s self-mythology
- Mood: Propulsive and slightly scandalized, with a strong undercurrent of literary criticism
- Verdict: An essential companion volume for anyone serious about The Sun Also Rises, offering the biographical and social context that transforms how the novel reads.
I finished Everybody Behaves Badly on a rainy afternoon when I had nothing particular planned, and it was exactly the right weather for it. Lesley Blume’s account of how Ernest Hemingway created both his most enduring novel and his enduring public persona in the summer of 1925 has the quality of very good gossip delivered by someone who has spent years in the archives. It is not a biography in the broad sense. It is something more focused and more useful: a close reconstruction of a specific creative moment and the human wreckage it left behind.
Jonathan Davis narrates the book with the kind of controlled authority that suits Blume’s journalistic style. He is not theatrical, but he is never neutral. There is a quality of restrained intensity in his reading that matches the material, where the stakes are personal and literary at the same time.
The Summer That Made Hemingway
The premise of the book is both narrow and ambitious: to show how the specific events of one summer in Pamplona, filtered through a specific social group with specific grievances and desires, became The Sun Also Rises. Blume’s argument is that Hemingway did not simply write what he saw. He shaped it, weaponized it, and used the people around him as raw material with a ruthlessness that shocked even the relatively uninhibited expatriate literary community of 1920s Paris.
The cast of characters is extraordinary. Lady Duff Twysden, the real-world model for Brett Ashley, emerges from the reviews as the book’s most compelling figure: a drinking, witty, gold-digging, free-spirited woman whom Hemingway desired and could not have, and whom he therefore embedded in his novel in ways that simultaneously immortalized and punished her. One reviewer devoted an entire assessment to Twysden, calling her exactly the kind of woman that all bad boys desire who Hemingway wanted but could never have. Blume gives this dimension of the story the attention it deserves.
How a Writer Builds a Myth
What distinguishes Everybody Behaves Badly from a conventional literary biography is its sustained attention to Hemingway as a self-inventor. Blume traces how he crafted his public persona as the hard-drinking, bullfight-loving expatriate genius with the same deliberateness he brought to his prose. This is not the story of a man accidentally famous. It is the story of someone who understood the machinery of literary celebrity and worked it consciously from very early in his career.
The book is also unsparing about the costs of that ambition to the people in Hemingway’s orbit. Gay Talese called the reporting magnificent, which is the right word for what Blume does with the documentary record. The journals, letters, and autobiographies of the people Hemingway skewered in The Sun Also Rises are marshalled here to show the gap between his public posture and his actual behavior toward his mentors and friends. One reviewer, while giving the book four stars, noted a strong anti-Hemingway bias in the framing. That is a fair observation, but it is not inaccurate to say that Blume is skeptical of her subject. The evidence she presents earns that skepticism.
The Structure That Earns Its Focus
Blume’s decision to limit the book to the period immediately before, during, and just after the writing of The Sun Also Rises is a discipline that pays dividends. She is not trying to write the definitive Hemingway biography; Carlos Baker and others have done that. She is trying to answer a specific question: how did this particular novel happen, and what did it cost the people who became its characters? Within those limits, the book is close to definitive.
One reviewer rated it five stars while acknowledging they find many other fiction writers better than Hemingway. That feels like exactly the right relationship to the material. You do not need to love Hemingway’s fiction to find Blume’s account of how he made it genuinely fascinating. The Minneapolis Star Tribune called it a page-turner that combines the best aspects of critic, biographer, and storyteller, which is accurate. It is the rare piece of literary nonfiction that is as unputdownable as a novel.
Who Should Listen and Who Should Skip
Everybody Behaves Badly is ideal for listeners who have read The Sun Also Rises and want to understand the real events and people behind it, as well as anyone interested in how literary celebrity gets constructed. Those with no interest in Hemingway or the Lost Generation will find the book entertaining but somewhat difficult to contextualize. Prior familiarity with the novel is not required but substantially enriches the listening experience.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do you need to have read The Sun Also Rises before listening to Everybody Behaves Badly?
Not strictly required, but highly recommended. The book is most rewarding when you can track the gap between the real people Blume profiles and the characters Hemingway made of them in the novel.
Is the book fair to Hemingway, or is it primarily a takedown?
It is rigorous rather than a takedown. Blume is clearly skeptical of Hemingway’s character, and the evidence she presents supports that skepticism. Some reviewers feel the framing is biased, but the underlying reporting is substantial and specific.
How does Jonathan Davis’s narration handle the large cast of real-life characters?
Davis maintains clear differentiation across the expatriate cast without turning the narration into performance. His controlled intensity suits a book that is more journalistic than theatrical in its approach.
Who is Lady Duff Twysden and why does she matter to the story?
She is the real-world model for Brett Ashley, the novel’s most famous female character. Blume argues that Twysden’s relationship with Hemingway, whom she desired her but with whom she did not sleep, was central to the emotional energy of The Sun Also Rises and to how he depicted her.
