Alright! The first book review! It was actually inspired by a local book club in Corvallis who picked The Paris Wife by Paula McLain as its book club book for the month of October. It is a fictionalized account of Ernest Hemingway’s first marriage to Hadley Richardson, and I must say that marriage was quite a doozy.
If you love the drama that extremely creative people tend to create then this is definitely the book for you. Ernest married Hadley at a very young age, twenty-one to her almost thirty. He loved her because she supported him, was loyal, and honestly didn’t challenge him intellectually or really on any level of their marriage. They move from the United States to the creative streets of Paris where they go on adventures all over Europe with the likes of fashionista’s who worked with Chanel, the F. Scott Fitzgerald, and many other famous writers in a time where people were challenging gender roles, their sexuality, and what it meant to live in the modern era.
What you can take without me giving any spoilers away is this…
- Hadley is such a badass, awesome name! Why aren’t more women named Hadley!?
- This book contains sex, drugs and rock and roll …okay no rock and roll but there is enough writers, artists, and musicians to make it worth your while
- Honestly Ernest Hemingway was a huge jerk, but he makes for some entertaining reading and your heart just aches for the characters and their struggles.
- Everything is wrapped up nicely in the epilogue which the more you read my reviews the more you will discover is very important to me…I absolutely HATE loose ties.
Overall, I’d give it 3.5/5 stars. Worth the read but won’t be on my list of favorites any time soon.
