about a book

jaclynday:

What I’ve Read: The Paris Wife: A Novel by Paula McLain

Admittedly, what I know of Ernest Hemingway are the basics passed down to me in high school and college lit classes (back when I thought I wanted to be an English major). I’ve read and loved his books and learned the bare bones facts of his life, but this novel delves much deeper. The fact that it’s a novel told almost entirely from the perspective of his first wife, Hadley Hemingway, should not deter you from reading it. Although it is fictionalized dialogue and some events were reconstructed by McLain, she did a wealth of research into their lives that lends her book an almost fly-on-the-wall perspective.

It’s not a happy book—Ernest Hemingway was a troubled soul and prone to depressive episodes that became only more pronounced throughout the marriage. You feel their desperation to hang onto each other and their marriage, even when it’s obvious to them that there is nothing left to salvage.

Hadley’s support of Ernest’s writing and indulgence of his sometimes negligent behavior seems irritating at first, but the tangible love (near idolization) she felt for him is apparent and provides some justification for the length of their marriage and his post-divorce, lifelong favoritism for her. It’s fascinating to see McLain bring this new perspective to a major American writer who has probably (and unfortunately) become best known personally for his womanizing and drinking. It was a wonderful book and I highly recommend it!

Here’s one of my favorite passages from the book:

“Ernest once told me that the word paradise was a Parisian word that meant ‘walled garden.’ I knew then that he understood how necessary the promises we made to each other were to our happiness. You couldn’t have real freedom unless you knew where the walls were and tended them. We could lean on the walls because they existed; they existed because we leaned on them.”