- Ernest Hemingway.
- Hadley Hemingway.
- Jazz Age.
- Lost Generation.
- The Sun Also Rises.
Author Paula McLain on The Paris Wife
Most of us know or think we know who Ernest Hemingway was -- a brilliant writer full of macho swagger, driven
to take on huge feats of bravery and a pitcher or two of martinis -- before lunch. But beneath this man or myth, or some
combination of the two, is another Hemingway, one we’ve never seen before. Hadley Richardson, Hemingway’s first wife, is
the perfect person to reveal him to us -- and also to immerse us in the incredibly exciting and volatile world of
Jazz-age Paris. The idea to write in Hadley’s voice came to me as I was reading Hemingway’s memoir, A Moveable Feast,
about his early years in Paris. In the final pages, he writes of Hadley, “I wished I had died before I ever loved anyone
but her.” That line, and his portrayal of their marriage -- so tender and poignant and steeped in regret -- inspired me
to search out biographies of Hadley, and then to research their brief and intense courtship and letters -- they wrote
hundreds and hundreds of pages of delicious pages to another!
I couldn’t help but fall in love with Hadley, and through her eyes, with the young Ernest Hemingway. He was just twenty
when they met, handsome and magnetic, passionate and sensitive and full of dreams. I was surprised at how much I liked
and admired him -- and before I knew it, I was entirely swept away by their gripping love story.
I hope you will be as captivated by this remarkable couple as I am -- and by the fascinating world of Paris in the
20’s, the fast-living, ardent and tremendously driven Lost Generation.
A Look Inside The Paris Wife
Ernest and Hadley Hemingway, Chamby, Switzerland, winter 1922
Ernest and Hadley Hemingway on their wedding day, 1921
Ernest, Hadley, and Bumby, Schruns, Austria, 1925
The Hemingways and friends at a cafe in Pamplona, Spain
Guest Reviewer: Helen Simonson on The Paris Wife
Helen Simonson is the New York Times bestselling author of Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand. She was born in England
and spent her teenage years in a small village in East Sussex. A graduate of the London School of Economics and former
travel advertising executive, she has lived in America for the past two decades. After many years in Brooklyn, she now
lives with her husband and two sons in the Washington, D.C., area. Paula McLain has taken on the task of writing a story
most of us probably think we already know--that of a doomed starter wife. To make life more difficult, McLain proposes
to tell us about Ernest Hemingway’s first wife, Hadley Richardson, who is a twenty-eight-year-old Midwestern spinster
when she marries the twenty-one-year-old unpublished, (but already cocksure) writer and runs off to Paris with him. The
talent and joy of this novel is that McLain does a startling job of making us understand this as a great love story and
seducing us into caring deeply, about both Ernest and Hadley, as their marriage eventually comes apart.
This novel moves beyond the dry s of biography or skewed personal vision of memoir, and takes a leap into the
emotional lives of these characters. It is a leap of faith for those readers who think they know Hemingway, but
McLain’s voice sticks close enough to historical material, and to the words and tone of Hemingway’s own writing, to be
convincing. She had me at the description of young Hadley’s her committing suicide.
“The carpets had been cleaned but not changed out for new, the revolver had been emptied and polished and placed back
in his desk.”
Hadley is also crippled by a childhood fall and trapped into spinsterhood by her mother’s declining and eventual
death. By the time she meets Hemingway, we are rooting for her to make a break for foreign shores--even as we
understand the danger of marrying a tempestuous man. Hemingway is all nervous purpose, ambition and charisma as he
meets Hadley and is drawn to her quiet strength and ordinary American sweetness. In his youth and uncertainty, she is
his rock and yet we already suspect that as he grows in artistic power, she will become an unwanted anchor. Through
Hadley’s eyes and plain-speaking voice, we see all of twenties Paris and the larger-than-life artists who gather in the
cafes. We drink tea with Gertrude Stein and champagne with Fitzgerald and Zelda. We run with the bulls in Pamplona and
spend winters in alpine chalets. And we see, through her love for him, the young writer becoming the Hemingway of
legend. Perhaps it is the nature of all great artists to be completely selfish and obnoxious, but Hadley’s voice is
always one of compassion. Even as Hemingway leaves her completely out of The Sun also Rises, even as Hemingway publicly
flirts with other women, she continues to explain and defend him. It is a testament to Paula McLain that the reader is
slow to dislike Hemingway, even as he slowly and inexorably betrays Hadley’s trust.
I loved this novel for its depiction of two passionate, yet humanly-flawed people struggling against impossible
odds--poverty, artistic fervor, destructive friendships--to cling on to each other. I raise a toast to Paula McLain’s
sure talent.
