"The Paris Wife" by Paula McLain

Several years ago my friend Margaret suggested that I read this book but for some reason, I never did.  I am happy to report that I finished listening to it today and it's a very good story. Basically it's a fictionalized account of Ernest Hemingway's marriage to Hadley Richardson and that how that relationship played out.

McLain paints a good picture, not just of Hadley and Hemingway, but of Paris and society in Europe during the early 1920's.  And what a society it was!  If McLain can be believed (and I believe she can) it was a time of fast and hard drinking, philandering, non-stop gratuitous self-indulgence and a "devil-may-care" attitude by almost everyone.  Yes, some had to struggle, like the Hemingways, but many had tons of money, little responsibility and wanton ways.  They all seemed to travel all the time, from Paris to Spain to Italy to the US and back again, over and over.  They drank all the time, hit on each other's mates, divorced, married again, had babies they didn't want to raise, ran with the bulls and lived to tell about it.  It makes the 1960's in America, the time of Sex, Drugs and Rock 'n Roll, seem mild and stodgy by comparison.

Given the research that Richardson did for the novel and given the subject matter, I think she is accurate in the details.  The relationship between Hadley and Hemingway is portrayed as true and serious and yet flawed and tainted by the times. Hemingway was a troubled man, there is no doubt about that, and his personality is clear on these pages. 

Two thumbs up for this broad-brushed portrait of the 1920's and the people of those times.

.