Julio Sanchez
There have been other great literary friendships but perhaps none so powerful as that between those two towers of American literature, Hemingway and Fitzgerald. Of course it's a story that's been told before, notably in Hemingway's fictional A Moveable Feast, and in Matthew J Bruccoli's documentary account, but Scott Donaldson's masterly double-biography sheds new light on the friendship and its fallout, in which the demon drink has the part of villain. The two men acted as a kind of mirror in which each could see reflected his own failures and triumphs, both personal and professional. It's a relationship narrated here with confidence, insight and sympathy and is as illuminating about the pair's work as their lives. And with its supporting cast of legendary writers such as Gertrude Stein and William Faulkner, it's also a welcome portrait of one of literature's finest hours. (Kirkus UK)