The Paris Wife: A Novel

Summary: Welcome to the romantic world of 1920s Paris--filled with artists, flappers and `The Lost Generation'. And who is our host? The un-glamorous, old-fashioned, yet steadfast Hadley Richardson Hemingway--first wife of the infamous bigger-than-life writer, Ernest Hemingway. And that's just the first of many paradoxes to come. Although McLain covers some of the same territory as The Movable Feast and to a lesser degree, The Sun Also Rises, this fictional account allows the author to show us some of the couple's interior lives. Heavily researched, including the author's digestion of thousands of their love letters, this account takes us from their whirl-wind courtship, to their flight to Paris as newlyweds, and their humble-beginnings in a small flat as they meet the literary royalty who held court in their salons--and we get to be the fly on the wall. We jet-set along with them not just from Chicago to Paris, but also to the bull-fights of Spain, and the ski-resorts of Austria. And since most of you already know "Hem" had three other wives after Hadley, it won't be a spoiler if I tell you it ends with Hadley marrying Paul Mowrer--to whom she remained happily married until his death in 1971. Writing Style: "Papa" would be proud of the clean, direct prose the author employs to tell the story of his early days. However, her background in poetry is evident in her delicate choice of words. The most remarkable aspect of the book, is how the author was able to withhold judgment and just tell the story--or have Hadley do so. And all the while Ernest is making choices that make the reader cringe, the writer somehow is able to separate the man from the poor choices, in a way that treats this deeply flawed character in a sympathetic way. She shows this tender understanding--and almost forgiveness--toward "Hem" in one of my favorite passages: "We called Paris the great good place, then, and it was. We invented it after all. We made it with our longing and cigarettes and Rhum St. James; we made it with smoke and smart and savage conversation and we dared anyone to say it wasn't ours. Together we made everything and then we busted it apart again. There are some who said I should have fought harder or longer than I did for my marriage, but in the end fighting for a love that was already gone felt like trying to live in the ruins of a lost city. I couldn't bear it, and so I backed away--and the reason I could do it at all, the reason I was strong enough and had the legs and the heart to do it, was because Ernest had come along and changed me. He helped me see what I really was and what I could do. Now that I knew what I could bear, I would have to bear losing him." Characters: The author demonstrates this same even-handedness in both of her main characters. Although, these young newlyweds are certainly a study in opposites attracting. Ernest is as exuberant, sophisticated, and young as Hadley is quiet, un-worldly, and almost passed her marriageable shelf-life for that era. Hadley is as selfless, loyal and sturdy as Ernest is narcissistic, deceitful (to his wife, his friends, and unfortunately even to himself) and moody. It would be simple in the hands of another writer to assume that your family dog had more personality than Hadley--or that Ernest was simply a bi-polar egotist with a bad medical plan. However, in McLain's hands, we find Hadley charmingly conventional and consistent--the kind of person you would want on your side; while we see Ernest as a smart man who makes stupid choices. Over and over again. But we never abandon him--instead we just keep rooting for him to make better choices the next time. Who else is invited to this wild and crazy Parisian party? How about Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, Ezra Pound, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald (was she really crazy or just eccentric?) and James Joyce--just for a bit of name-dropping. This supporting cast isn't just famous--many are carefully drawn even if we are not as sympathetic to their plight. And, of course, there' s finally the femme fatale--who we love to hate--and who betrays Hadley and steals her husband--but then, you knew that was coming... Themes: Of course, McLain threads many themes throughout her tale: Childhood Trauma, Marriage and Relationships, Loss and Forgiveness, Search for Identity, Ambition and Desires, Living Abroad, and the Consequences of Fame. Why Book Clubs will Love it: It's Paris in the 20's--need I say more? Probably not, but you know I will, anyway. In addition to the themes listed above, the most discussable aspect of this story, is all of the relationships: Hadley and Ernest to their parents and siblings while growing up, to their friends in Chicago, to their new-found friends in Paris, to their son, Bumby, to the city of Paris, and of course, to each other. So be sure to bring an extra bottle of wine to book club that night--the discussion is gonna go late. Random Rants: If the book is about 1920's Paris--why do we find a 50's housewife (Ok-40's at the earliest) on the cover? Is this the only photograph Ballantine could find? Where is the joie de vivre of 1920's Paris? This dust jacket disconnect is similar to the last book I reviewed, The Four Ms. Bradwells whose cover is adorned with a beautiful double strand of ivory pearls--it's absolutely beautiful. Too bad the infamous pearls from the book were black pearls! Don't the graphic artists responsible for the cover ever talk to someone who's actually read the book anymore? Pick it up--it's a compelling read your whole club will enjoy! Cheers! BCC

To preface this review properly, I must tell you that I am a huge fan of everything Hemingway. I love his books and short stories more than any other author out there. So I find myself forgiving Hemingway's faults, of which, I know, there are many. I do not necessarily think that you have to love or hate Hemingway to enjoy this book, but I do think that you should have some kind of background on him before reading. By background I mean you may have read his books or heard someone talk about him. Something. For me, because I am desperate to know this man and get inside his head, this seemed like the next best thing - getting inside his first wife's head. I understand that this is meant to be an fiction novel, but I found myself completely relating to his wife and what she went through during her marriage to Hemingway. It was a sometimes brutal journey but one that I am glad I took with her. Living in such a time with so many artists and writers following their own hearts, it was really fascinating to live this life through a rather practical and submissive woman. I have heard a lot of people say that they often wanted to shake this woman and make her see how horrible Hemingway treated her, but I think that when someone has a love so deep and profound that almost anything becomes justifiable. And it is interesting to experience that. The writing is OK. I think a book like this focuses more on the story rather than on the eloquent way to write - and the story was great. The author did a good job in captivating me from the beginning to the end. There were a few stomach-dropping moments when I just found myself either forgetting to breathe or shaking my head in sympathy. That, to me, is a success. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand Hemingway's life a little more. If you have read "The Sun Also Rises," this story provides you with the background to that book. If you want to know more about Paris and the artists' corner, this is a great escape into that world. If you just have a fascination with Hemingway's books and writing, this will give you an insight into his mind. Happy reading!

Bookclub

Affascinante descrizione di una vera storia d'amore molto particolare. Mi ha fatto conoscere il carattere unico di un grande scrittore come Hemingway.

The story of The Paris Wife is familiar to anyone who knows A Moveable Feast, Hemingway’s memoir of “how Paris was in the early days when we were very poor and very happy“. Feast was written some 30 years after Hemingway left Hadley for her friend Pauline Pfeiffer, who would become the second of his four wives. McLain retells Feast from Hadley’s perspective, in the tradition of novels such as Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea, giving voice to a pivotal and yet comparatively silent woman from a classic book. The difference between the two is that the action here is largely seen through Hadley’s eyes; the domestic takes precedence and there are more emotions and exposition than Papa would permit. Hadley Richardson is 28 when she first meets the glamorous young war hero at a party. Wholesome, a little old-fashioned, she’s resigned to a spinsterish existence, living unmarried and unemployed in the upper floor of her sister’s house. Despite the cobwebs she is, as Ernest quickly spots, “a good clear sort“, and so he marries her and whisks her from St Louis to the whirlwind of 1920s Paris, in part because it was comparatively cheap for expatriates just after the First World War. The young Hemingways were soon befriended by Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, Ezra Pound and Dorothy Shakespear, James Joyce, and Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. Modernism was taking flight: in February 1922 Sylvia Beach would publish Joyce’s Ulysses, and in December 1922 T.S. Eliot and Pound published The Waste Land. Hemingway absorbed it all. Even stripped to the core, the story possesses a classically tragic arc, and it’s not hard to see its appeal to a novelist bent on re-fleshing bare bones. Ernest and Hadley – Tatie, as they call each other – begin their expat life in a flush of love. He writes, she cooks, and they drink away the evenings “until we were beautifully blurred and happy to be there together“. The first ripple of disharmony comes when Hadley decides to bring all Ernest’s manuscripts – three years of work, copies included – with her in a valise to a rendezvous in Switzerland. Of course, the case is lost, and the disaster exposes a fault line between the pair that’s only further strained when Hadley discovers she’s pregnant. McLain atmospherically evokes the garret apartments in which they lived; the notorious trip to Lausanne during which Hadley lost all of Hemingway’s drafts; the outings to the Paris races, skiing in Austria and bullfighting in Pamplona – the trips that would inspire The Sun Also Rises. It was an era of “open” marriages, although the openness was often one-sided, as McLain pointedly shows male artists such as Pound, Ford and, eventually, Hemingway, trying (often successfully) to install their mistresses in the same home as their wives. McLain resists the facile idea that such ménages were a jolly party in the first era of free love: as Hadley gradually becomes aware that Hemingway might be unfaithful, first with Lady Duff Twysden, the inspiration for Brett Ashley, and later, much more seriously, with her friend Pauline, she must decide how “modern” she’s prepared to be. Hadley is a deeply touching character, dignified even as she loses almost everything she’s loved, and making her goodness both convincing and interesting is an impressive feat. McLain captures Hemingway’s legendary charisma and his fatal tendencies toward bullying and boastfulness. She also manages to evoke his hypnotic, infectious cadences in her own prose without straying into parody: Hadley remembers “The wine and the sunshine and the warm stones under our feet. He wanted everything there was to have, and more than that.” Some might wish McLain had given Hadley a voice more distinct from the highly stylised prose of Feast – but for anyone steeped in that book its idiom is an undeniably effective way of making the story feel good and simple and true. McLain writes with vivid, memorable touches: the pregnant Hadley, game to the last, sewing baby blankets between bullfights; Hemingway declaring that Pound can’t be “the devil”, because “I’ve met the devil . . . and he doesn’t give a damn about art“. Fitzgerald assures Hadley the first time they meet that he’ll write something new if she will “promise to admire every word extravagantly“; McLain has a similarly good ear for Zelda’s famously imagistic language, having her describe a flapper as “decorative and unfathomable and all made of silver“. The Paris Wife sings with such pitch-perfect renderings of famous voices, grounded in a tale made all the more poignant for our knowledge of how sad all the young men and women will turn out to be, how the bright young things will tarnish and disintegrate. In drafts cut from the first edition of A Moveable Feast, Hemingway explains: “This is about the first part of Paris . . . That Paris you could never put into a single book.” Maybe not – but Paula McLain has come impressively close.

A beautifully crafted story about Ernest Hemingway and his first wife Hadley Richardson. A love story that will endure and the terrible pain of losing the love of your life. Hemingway, a complex man, driven to write and live to excess, who was in love with love and the excitement of love’s initial chemistry but couldn’t sustain it. I found this story incredibly sad. Hadley loved Ernest so deeply and forgave so much. Through it all, she was his safe haven. His one true love.

Oh wow! A haunting, mesmeric and beautiful read , intense , compelling and sublimely crafted. I had no prior interest in Hemingway of any real knowledge of his life except that he was a tortured soul. I finished this book caring even less for him but feeling incredibly moved by the story of Hadley, his first wife. It's her that I felt drawn to, her sorrows, her stoicism and her beauty. I felt no sympathy for Hemingway, in fact I heartily disliked his ego, his self absorption and his brutal unsophistication. Obviously this book was written from the perspective of Hadley and therefore a more intimate portrayal of her character than his , but I really hatedHemingway in the end, loathed him . I loved the presentation of Hadley however biased knighthood been. The writing is superb, proper literature . I scored this book, absolutely adored it.