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The Paris Wife Paperback – November 27, 2012

by Paula McLain (Author)

4.3 13,608 ratings

Goodreads Choice Award winner

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A deeply evocative story of ambition and betrayal that captures the love affair between two unforgettable people, Ernest Hemingway and his wife Hadley—from the author of Love and Ruin and the new novel When the Stars Go Dark, available now!

“A beautiful portrait of being in Paris in the glittering 1920s—as a wife and as one’s own woman.”—Entertainment Weekly

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY People • Chicago Tribune • NPR • The Philadelphia Inquirer • Kirkus Reviews • The Toronto Sun • BookPage

Chicago, 1920: Hadley Richardson is a quiet twenty-eight-year-old who has all but given up on love and happiness—until she meets Ernest Hemingway. Following a whirlwind courtship and wedding, the pair set sail for Paris, where they become the golden couple in a lively and volatile group—the fabled “Lost Generation”—that includes Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Though deeply in love, the Hemingways are ill prepared for the hard-drinking, fast-living, and free-loving life of Jazz Age Paris. As Ernest struggles to find the voice that will earn him a place in history and pours himself into the novel that will become The Sun Also Rises, Hadley strives to hold on to her sense of self as her roles as wife, friend, and muse become more challenging. Eventually they find themselves facing the ultimate crisis of their marriage—a deception that will lead to the unraveling of everything they’ve fought so hard for.

A heartbreaking portrayal of love and torn loyalty, The Paris Wife is all the more poignant because we know that, in the end, Hemingway wrote that he would rather have died than fallen in love with anyone but Hadley.

Print length

331 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Ballantine Books
Publication date

November 27, 2012
Dimensions

5.3 x 1.01 x 8 inches
ISBN-10

9780345521316
ISBN-13

978-0345521316
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the paris wife;literary fiction;book club books;books for mom;bestselling fiction;historical fiction

Editorial Reviews

Review

“McLain smartly explores Hadley's ambivalence about her role as supportive wife to a budding genius. . . . Women and book groups are going to eat up this novel.”—USA Today

“Written much in the style of Nancy Horan's Loving Frank . . . Paula McLain's fictional account of Hemingway's first marriage beautifully captures the sense of despair and faint hope that pervaded the era and their marriage.”—Associated Press

“Lyrical and exhilarating . . . McLain offers a raw and fresh look at the prolific Hemingway. In this mesmerizing and helluva-good-time novel, McLain inhabits Richardson’s voice and guides us from Chicago—Richardson and Hemingway’s initial stomping ground—to the place where their life together really begins: Paris.”—Elle

“A beautiful portrait of being in Paris in the glittering 1920s—as a wife and as one’s own woman.”—Entertainment Weekly

“[Paula] McLain has brought Hadley [Hemingway] to life in a novel that begins in a rush of early love. . . . A moving portrait of a woman slighted by history, a woman whose . . . story needed to be told.”—The Boston Globe

“The Paris Wife creates the kind of out-of-body reading experience that dedicated book lovers yearn for, nearly as good as reading Hemingway for the first time—and it doesn’t get much better than that.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune

“Exquisitely evocative . . . This absorbing, illuminating book gives us an intimate view of a sympathetic and perceptive woman, the striving writer she married, the glittering and wounding Paris circle they were part of. . . . McLain reinvents the story of Hadley and Ernest’s romance with the lucid grace of a practiced poet.”—The Seattle Times

“A novel that’s impossible to resist. It’s all here, and it all feels real.”—People

About the Author

Paula McLain is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels Love and Ruin, Circling the Sun, The Paris Wife, and A Ticket to Ride, the memoir Like Family: Growing Up in Other People’s Houses, and two collections of poetry. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Good Housekeeping, O: The Oprah Magazine, Town & Country, The Guardian, The Huffington Post, and elsewhere. She lives in Ohio with her family.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

ONE

The very first thing he does is fix me with those wonderfully brown eyes and say, "It's possible I'm too drunk to judge, but you might have something there."

It's October 1920 and jazz is everywhere. I don't know any jazz, so I'm playing Rachmaninoff. I can feel a flush beginning in my cheeks from the hard cider my dear pal Kate Smith has stuffed down me so I'll relax. I'm getting there, second by second. It starts in my fingers, warm and loose, and moves along my nerves, rounding through me. I haven't been drunk in over a year--not since my mother fell seriously ill--and I've missed the way it comes with its own perfect glove of fog, settling snugly and beautifully over my brain. I don't want to think and I don't want to feel, either, unless it's as simple as this beautiful boy's knee inches from mine.

The knee is nearly enough on its own, but there's a whole package of a man attached, tall and lean, with a lot of very dark hair and a dimple in his left cheek you could fall into. His friends call him Hemingstein, Oinbones, Bird, Nesto, Wemedge, anything they can dream up on the spot. He calls Kate Stut or Butstein (not very flattering!), and another fellow Little Fever, and yet another Horney or the Great Horned Article. He seems to know everyone, and everyone seems to know the same jokes and stories. They telegraph punch lines back and forth in code, lightning fast and wisecracking. I can't keep up, but I don't mind really. Being near these happy strangers is like a powerful transfusion of good cheer.

When Kate wanders over from the vicinity of the kitchen, he points his perfect chin at me and says, "What should we name our new friend?"

"Hash," Kate says.

"Hashedad's better," he says. "Hasovitch."

"And you're Bird?" I ask.

"Wem," Kate says.

"I'm the fellow who thinks someone should be dancing." He smiles with everything he's got, and in very short order, Kate's brother Kenley has kicked the living room carpet to one side and is manning the Victrola. We throw ourselves into it, dancing our way through a stack of records. He's not a natural, but his arms and legs are free in their joints, and I can tell that he likes being in his body. He's not the least shy about moving in on me either. In no time at all our hands are damp and clenched, our cheeks close enough that I can feel the very real heat of him. And that's when he finally tells me his name is Ernest.

"I'm thinking of giving it away, though. Ernest is so dull, and Hemingway? Who wants a Hemingway?"

Probably every girl between here and Michigan Avenue, I think, looking at my feet to keep from blushing. When I look up again, he has his brown eyes locked on me.

"Well? What do you think? Should I toss it out?"

"Maybe not just yet. You never know. A name like that could catch on, and where would you be if you'd ditched it?"

"Good point. I'll take it under consideration."

A slow number starts, and without asking, he reaches for my waist and scoops me toward his body, which is even better up close. His chest is solid and so are his arms. I rest my hands on them lightly as he backs me around the room, past Kenley cranking the Victrola with glee, past Kate giving us a long, curious look. I close my eyes and lean into Ernest, smelling bourbon and soap, tobacco and damp cotton--and everything about this moment is so sharp and lovely, I do something completely out of character and just let myself have it.

TWO

There's a song from that time by Nora Bayes called "Make Believe," which might have been the most lilting and persuasive treatise on self-delusion I'd ever heard. Nora Bayes was beautiful, and she sang with a trembling voice that told you she knew things about love. When she advised you to throw off all the old pain and worry and heartache and smile--well, you believed she'd done this herself. It wasn't a suggestion but a prescription. The song must have been a favorite of Kenley's, too. He played it three times the night I arrived in Chicago, and each time I felt it speaking directly to me: Make believe you are glad when you're sorry. Sunshine will follow the rain.

I'd had my share of rain. My mother's illness and death had weighed on me, but the years before had been heavy, too. I was only twenty-eight, and yet I'd been living like a spinster on the second floor of my older sister Fonnie's house while she and her husband Roland and their four dear beasts lived downstairs. I hadn't meant for things to stay this way. I assumed I'd get married or find a career like my school friends. They were harried young mothers now, schoolteachers or secretaries or aspiring ad writers, like Kate. Whatever they were, they were living their lives, out there doing it, making their mistakes. Somehow I'd gotten stuck along the way--long before my mother's illness--and I didn't know how to free myself exactly.

Sometimes, after playing an hour of passable Chopin, I'd lie down on the carpet in front of the piano and stare at the ceiling, feeling whatever energy I'd had while playing leave my body. It was terrible to feel so empty, as if I were nothing. Why couldn't I be happy? And just what was happiness anyway? Could you fake it, as Nora Bayes insisted? Could you force it like a spring bulb in your kitchen, or rub up against it at a party in Chicago and catch it like a cold?

Ernest Hemingway was still very much a stranger to me, but he seemed to do happiness all the way up and through. There wasn't any fear in him that I could see, just intensity and aliveness. His eyes sparked all over everything, all over me as he leaned back on his heel and spun me toward him. He tucked me fast against his chest, his breath warm on my neck and hair.

"How long have you known Stut?" he asked.

"We went to grade school together in St. Louis, at Mary Institute. What about you?"

"You want my whole educational pedigree? It's not much."

"No," I laughed. "Tell me about Kate."

"That would fill a book, and I'm not sure I'm the fellow to write it." His voice was light, still teasing, but he'd stopped smiling.

"What do you mean?"

"Nothing," he said. "The short and sweet part is our families both have summer cottages in Horton Bay. That's Michigan to a southerner like you."

"Funny that we both grew up with Kate."

"I was ten to her eighteen. Let's just say I was happy to grow up alongside her. With a nice view of the scenery."

"You had a crush, in other words."

"No, those are the right words," he said, then looked away.

I'd obviously touched some kind of nerve in him, and I didn't want to do it again. I liked him smiling and laughing and loose. In fact, my response to him was so powerful that I already knew I would do a lot to keep him happy. I changed the subject fast.

"Are you from Chicago?"

"Oak Park. That's right up the street."

"For a southerner like me."

"Precisely."

"Well, you're a bang-up dancer, Oak Park."

"You too, St. Louis."

The song ended and we parted to catch our breath. I moved to one side of Kenley's long living room while Ernest was quickly swallowed up by admirers--women, naturally. They seemed awfully young and sure of themselves with their bobbed hair and brightly rouged cheeks. I was closer to a Victorian holdout than a flapper. My hair was still long, knotted at the nape of my neck, but it was a good rich auburn color, and though my dress wasn't up to the minute, my figure made up for that, I thought. In fact, I'd been feeling very good about the way I looked the whole time Ernest and I were dancing--he was so appreciative with those eyes!--but now that he was surrounded by vivacious women, my confidence was waning.

"You seemed awfully friendly with Nesto," Kate said, appearing at my elbow.

"Maybe. Can I have the rest of that?" I pointed to her drink.

"It's rather volcanic." She grimaced and passed it over.

"What is it?" I put my face to the rim of the glass, which was close enough. It smelled like rancid gasoline.

"Something homemade. Little Fever handed it to me in the kitchen. I'm not sure he didn't cook it up in his shoe."

Over against a long row of windows, Ernest began parading back and forth in a dark blue military cape someone had dug up. When he turned, the cape lifted and flared dramatically.

"That's quite a costume," I said.

"He's a war hero, didn't he tell you?"

I shook my head.

"I'm sure he'll get to it eventually." Her face didn't give anything away, but her voice had an edge.

"He told me he used to pine for you."

"Really?" There was the tone again. "He's clearly over it now."

I didn't know what had come between these two old friends, but whatever it was, it was obviously complicated and well under wraps. I let it drop.

"I like to think I'm the kind of girl who'll drink anything," I said, "but maybe not from a shoe."

"Right. Let's hunt something up." She smiled and flashed her green eyes at me, and became my Kate again, not grim at all, and off we went to get very drunk and very merry.

I found myself watching for Ernest the rest of the night, waiting for him to appear and stir things up, but he didn't. He must have slipped away at some point. One by one nearly everyone did, so that by 3:00 a.m. the party had been reduced to dregs, with Little Fever as the tragic centerpiece. He was passed out on the davenport with long dark wool socks stretched over his face and his hat perched on his crossed feet.

"To bed, to bed," Kate said with a yawn.

"Is that Shakespeare?"

"I don't know. Is it?" She hiccuped, and then laughed. "I'm off to my own little hovel now. Will you be all right here?"

"Of course. Kenley's made up a lovely room for me." I walked her to the door, and as she sidled into her coat, we made a date for lunch the next day.

"You'll have to tell me all about things at home. We haven't had a moment to talk about your mother. It must have been awful for you, poor creatch."

"Talking about it will only make me sad again," I said. "But this is perfect. Thanks for begging me to come."

"I worried you wouldn't."

"Me too. Fonnie said it was too soon."

"Yes, well, she would say that. Your sister can be smart about some things, Hash, but about you, nearly never."

I gave her a grateful smile and said good night. Kenley's apartment was warrenlike and full of boarders, but he'd given me a large and very clean room, with a four-poster bed and a bureau. I changed into my nightdress then took down my hair and brushed it, sorting through the highlights of the evening. No matter how much fun I'd had with Kate or how good it was to see her after all these years, I had to admit that number one on my list of memorable events was dancing with Ernest Hemingway. I could still feel his brown eyes and his electric, electrifying energy--but what had his attentions meant? Was he babysitting me, as Kate's old friend? Was he still gone on Kate? Was she in love with him? Would I even see him again?

My mind was suddenly such a hive of unanswerable questions that I had to smile at myself. Wasn't this exactly what I had wanted coming to Chicago, something new to think about? I turned to face the mirror over the bureau. Hadley Richardson was still there, with her auburn waves and thin lips and pale round eyes--but there was something new, too, a glimmer of potential. It was just possible the sun was on its way. In the meantime, I would hum Nora Bayes and do my damnedest to make believe.

THREE

The next morning, I walked into the kitchen to find Ernest leaning lazily against the refrigerator, reading the morning newspaper and devouring half a loaf of bread.

"Did you sleep here?" I asked, unable to mask my surprise at seeing him.

"I'm boarding here. Just for a while, until things take off for me."

"What do you mean to do?"

"Make literary history, I guess."

"Gee," I said, impressed all over again by his confidence and conviction. You couldn't fake that. "What are you working on now?"

He pulled a face. "Now I'm writing trash copy for Firestone tires, but I mean to write important stories or a novel. Maybe a book of poetry."

That threw me. "I thought poets were quiet and shrinking and afraid of sunlight," I said, sitting down.

"Not this one." He came over to join me at the table, turning his chair around to straddle it. "Who's your favorite writer?"

"Henry James, I suppose. I seem to read him over and over."

"Well, aren't you sweetly square?"

"Am I? Who's your favorite writer?"

"Ernest Hemingway." He grinned. "Anyway, there're lots of famous writers in Chicago. Kenley knows Sherwood Anderson. Heard of him?"

"Sure. He wrote Winesburg, Ohio."

"That's the one."

"Well, with your nerve, you can probably do anything at all."

He looked at me seriously, as if he were trying to gauge whether I was teasing or placating him. I wasn't. "How do you take your coffee, Hasovitch?" he finally said.

"Hot," I said, and he grinned his grin, elastic and devastating.

When Kate arrived for our lunch date, Ernest and I were still in the kitchen talking away. I hadn't yet changed out of my dressing gown, and there she was sharp and fresh in a red wool hat and coat.

"I'm sorry," I said, "I won't be a minute."

"Take your time, you deserve a little indolence," she said, but seemed impatient with me just the same.

I went off to dress, and when I came back, Kate was alone in the room.

"Where did Nesto run off to?"

"I haven't the faintest," Kate said. And then, because she clearly read disappointment in my face, "Should I have invited him along?"

"Don't be silly. This is our day."

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0345521315
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Ballantine Books; Reprint edition (November 27, 2012)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 331 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780345521316
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0345521316
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12.2 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.3 x 1.01 x 8 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #53,312 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #182 in Biographical Historical Fiction
- #311 in Biographical Fiction (Books)
- #4,582 in Literary Fiction (Books)

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Paula McLain

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Paula McLain is the author of the the New York Times bestselling novels The Paris Wife, Circling the Sun, and Love and Ruin. Now she introduces When the Stars Go Dark, an atmospheric tale of intertwined destinies and heart-wrenching suspense. McLain was born in Fresno, California in 1965. After being abandoned by both parents, she and her two sisters became wards of the California Court System, moving in and out of various foster homes for the next fourteen years. When she aged out of the system, she supported herself by working as a nurses aid in a convalescent hospital, a pizza delivery girl, an auto-plant worker, a cocktail waitress--before discovering she could (and very much wanted to) write. She received her MFA in poetry from the University of Michigan in 1996, and is the author of two collections of poetry, a memoir, Like Family: Growing Up in Other People's Houses, and the debut novel, A Ticket to Ride. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, O: the Oprah Magazine, Good Housekeeping, Real Simple, Huffington Post, the Guardian and elsewhere. She lives with her family in Cleveland.

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Marsha Toy Engstrom "The Book Club Cheerleader" www.bookclubcheerleader.com

The Lost Generation Revisited

Reviewed in the United States on April 4, 2011

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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

4 people found this helpful

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Schuyler T Wallace

AN INTERESTING STUDY OF BEHAVIORAL CONSEQUENCES

Reviewed in the United States on July 19, 2012

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Hemingway's writing is considered classic. His personal behavior and habits, on the other hand, were boorish and egocentric, causing a great deal of turmoil in his personal life. Eventually he became an ill and tormented man who committed suicide, an unfortunate family trait. Paula McLain's THE PARIS WIFE details much about his life and in particular that with his first wife Hadley Richardson. McLain's account gives the reader an inside look at the way he lived his life, how he interacted with Hadley, the motives behind his behavior, and the methods he used to create some of his masterpieces.

McLain has penned an interesting novel about Hemingway and Richardson. We watch Hadley slide into a way of life far different from her roots, and learn the role Hemingway played in greasing that chute. Their early relationship was filled with cloying endearments and promises that almost made their story laughable in its naïveté. But Ernest's constant unfaithful nature eventually, as might be expected, caused a rift that was not repairable. Hadley seemed unable to stand up to Ernest, and he took advantage of her weakness with ever increasing deception and mental cruelty. Early promises turned to bitter disregard for her happiness.

My understanding of Hemingway's behavior during his young years doesn't quite square with McLain's portrayal of him. In her book he comes across as timid and almost guarded in his relationship with Hadley during the early years of their courtship and marriage. My understanding of Hemingway's life indicates that, although he hadn't reached the excesses displayed in later years, he was far from mild-mannered. He was rebellious and self-centered, even as a young man.

I also have trouble with the author's premise that Hadley and Ernest originally skirted the edges of the soirees and avoided most of the heavy action indulged in by the "Lost Generation" in Paris, the rowdy bunch of artists and writers they mingled with. My understanding is that they were greatly involved. Later they got even more engaged and the results were disastrous for both of them.

Hemingway acquired a lover, Hadley became a weak and suffering "other" woman, and both became chronic alcoholics. Ernest's behavior was despicable but, as the author outlined, was probably symbolic of a lifetime of poor conduct. But Hadley's inability to muster the courage to be assertive and stand her ground was perhaps a greater tragedy because she was essentially a loving and supportive wife who was overrun by a bully. Although eight years older than Hemingway, she was very immature, a characteristic that plagued her throughout her life.

I'm not sure where the author got her background information as there are no cites. The lack of credits is not surprising, nor should it be expected in a novel where a writer is privileged to take liberties with some facts. I thought McLain's chapters delving into Ernest's mind set, particularly regarding the suicide choices available to him, were incredible and absolutely believable. Her writing is impeccable; her scenes are well developed and visual; her research is voluminous. I regret my reluctance to accept some of her portrayals because, otherwise, the book is fascinating.

I recommend this book. It's a fine study of the excesses engaged in by some highly talented people and the consequences that choices make in the process of living.

Schuyler T Wallace
Author of TIN LIZARD TALES

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esl75

Well written

Reviewed in France on September 15, 2022

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This book is well written, taking Hadley's voice. Written like a memoir, we meet Hemingway & see how the couple lived, but through Hadley's eyes. We meet all the greats of the Lost Generation, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, and so on, as though we were there. The book is touching & so well written I had trouble putting it down. A must read for any Hemingway fan.

Eduardo A. A. Domingues

Hemmingway - Biografia...

Reviewed in Brazil on August 26, 2017

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Excelente biografia do Ernest Hemmingway, escrita pela primeira Mulher dele. Retrata muito bem a situação literária dos anos '20 a '50...
Vale a pena LER...!

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Aishwarya Saxena

A brilliant portrait of an ordinary woman in extraordinary times

Reviewed in India on April 19, 2017

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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.

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Christina Strigas

Take me to the 1920's

Reviewed in Canada on June 17, 2016

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I loved how this book took me to the 1920's exactly as I imagined it. Every word made me realize how intense of a love that Hadley and Ernest shared. They were true soul mates, but love is never enough for an artist. This is what it comes down to in this book. Their relationship was intense and full of doubt by the end. I recommend this book for anyone that loves Hemingway's style of writing. Paula McLain truly captures the style of writing that Hemingway created. The simplicity of the phrases and the attraction of the words; how you can say so much with a few words and short dialogue. I loved this book and by the last chapter, I was crying. I felt the deep love and the sadness at how it had to end...a book for romantics and for the revival of the 1920's. I am sure I was there in a past life.

Jennykching

Interesting and moving

Reviewed in Australia on October 17, 2016

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At first somewhat plodding and even, at times, initially cliche ridden, this book soon picked up and grabbed me and I looked forward to getting back to it each evening. Sad but also life affirming and beautiful and a very interesting view into a different, hedonistic yet more innocent time . And also an insight into a fascinating, magnetic but tragically contradictory, man (Hemingway).

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