Book 36 - The Paris Wife

Book 36: The Paris Wife by Paula McLain

The Paris Wife
(click here to purchase)

Description: A deeply evocative story of ambition and betrayal, The Paris Wife captures a remarkable period of time and a love affair between two unforgettable people: Ernest Hemingway and his wife Hadley.
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 and her life changes forever. 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 and Zelda Fitzgerald.
Though deeply in love, the Hemingways are ill-prepared for the hard-drinking and fast-living life of Jazz Age Paris, which hardly values traditional notions of family and monogamy. Surrounded by beautiful women and competing egos, Ernest struggles to find the voice that will earn him a place in history, pouring all the richness and intensity of his life with Hadley and their circle of friends into the novel that will become The Sun Also Rises. Hadley, meanwhile, strives to hold on to her sense of self as the demands of life with Ernest grow costly and her roles as wife, friend, and muse become more challenging. Despite their extraordinary bond, they eventually 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. [GoodReads]

It's obvious that I've really gotten into Historical Fiction this year. A couple months ago, I read Call Me Zelda by Erika Robuck about Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald's crazy bad marriage. Robuck writes another book called Hemingway's Girl, which I own but have not read yet, about Hemingway's second married to Pauline. Now, I am not a Hemingway fan in the least. In fact, I detest the man for his selfish self-admiration and loathing of women. Plus, I think his novels are just plain BORING. For these reasons, that is why I have not read Robuck's novel. But while walking through the bookstore one day, I noticed The Paris Wife. I was instantly drawn to it, and in addition to my recent obsession with all this Paris, I swiped the book and read it in a few sittings. (In fact, the first three books I read this month so far all have to do with Paris. Funny.) I was not sorry that I did.

Paula McLain has one of the greatest writing voices that I've ever come across. During the first few pages, I stopped a couple of times just to compliment her out loud (I wonder what my boyfriend thought about that. While finishing up Michelle Moran's Madame Tussaud, I was shouting at the pages and new surprises surfaced. Boyfriend says, "I've never heard you react to a book like this! To which I reply, "Ahhhhhhhh - GOOD BOOK!")

McLain's novel is about Hemingway's first marriage to Hadley Richardson. I fell in love with Hadley on page one.

Paula McLain

Meet the Author: Paula McLain has published two collections of poetry, “Less of Her” and “Stumble, Gorgeous,” both from New Issues Poetry Press, and a memoir entitled “Like Family: Growing Up in Other People's Houses” (Little, Brown, 2003). “A Ticket to Ride,” is her debut novel from Ecco/HarperCollins. She received her MFA in poetry from the University of Michigan in 1996, and has since been a writer-in-residence at Yaddo, The MacDowell Colony, and The Ucross Foundation Residency Program, and received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Ohio Arts Council. Individual poems and essays have appeared in numerous journals, including the Gettysburg Review, Antioch Review, and The New York Times Sunday Magazine. As well as teaching part-time at John Carroll University, she is a core faculty member in the low-residency MFA Program in Poetry at New England College. [GoodReads]

To visit Paula, follow these links:

Paula McLain Randomhouse SITE

UPCOMING BOOK: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by JK Rowling
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