This is fiction with the backdrop of real people--even their real names are used. Paula McLain writes about Ernest Hemingway and his relationship with his first wife, Hadley Richardson, and tells the story through Hadley's voice: therefore, Hemingway is not the drunk swaggering author but rather a suitable romantic hero, in fact, for what turns out to be a pleasantly affecting love story.
Hadley is 28 when she first meets the glamorous young war hero at a party. Wholesome and a little old-fashioned, she's resigned to a spinsterish existence, living unmarried and unemployed in the upper floor of her sister's house. Ernest marries her and whisks her from St Louis to the whirlwind of 1920s Paris, where the likes of Ezra Pound, F Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein can be found thronging every boulevard.
Since we already know the end, the story possesses a classically tragic arc.
Soon after the birth of their son, Ernest becomes entangled with another woman, who is to become wife number two...and so on, because it doesn't end anywhere near there. Hadley goes on to marry a journalist she met in Paris and have an entirely satisfying married life the second go round.
Hadley is a touching character, dignified even as she loses almost everything she's loved, and making her goodness both convincing and interesting is an impressive feat.
The untold mystery for me is the repleteness of suicide in the Hemingway family tree. Hemingway's father, uncle, brother, sister, and grand-daughter all committed suicide, perhaps related to hemochromatosis, perhaps not, but it is an impressive history. This book could be titles 'The Good Wife" rather than 'The Paris Wife', but it makes an interesting read, and a different window through which to view the author.
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