Ernest Hemingway wouldn’t approve of all the glowing adjectives, but there’s no denying that Hemingway’s Goblet is smart, witty and at times uproariously funny. Dermot Ross has created a memorable and flawed lead character named Nick Harrieson, a divorced middle-aged law professor who is popular with students at his university in London but haplessly (and hopelessly) naive and noncommittal when it comes to his relationships with women. Nick doesn’t help himself when he allows himself to be drawn into an ill-advised relationship with one of his masters students, a Korean woman named Adrienne. Soon he finds himself the subject of a sexual harassment allegation. Forced to take a one-month leave while the university investigates, he learns that his grandfather was in Pamplona in the 1920s, and in due course he finds out that the goblet sitting on his sister’s mantlepiece with a mysterious inscription was a gift from Hemingway to Grandpa Harrieson in 1925. Nick’s quest to learn more about his grandfather and the goblet leads to his joining forces with Adrienne as they uncover some unsavory revelations about the great author. Nick also is forced to confront a number of aspects about his own character and life.

This clever literary gem is much more than a novel. It takes readers on a wild ride from London to Auckland to Thailand to Hemingway’s Spain. Dermot Ross provides a gentle leg-pull on many of Hemingway’s renowned and toxic characteristics, but without disrespecting the quality of Hemingway’s writings. The portrait of the Nobel Prize winner that emerges is comical and at
times scandalous.

The book is part mystery, part romance, part historical fiction, and all parts delightfully rollicking.