The Paris Wife by Paula McLain: book review

The ParisWife (2011) is about Hadley Richardson, the first wife of American author, Ernest Hemingway.

Written in the first person—as if by Hadley’s own hand—the author wrote the novel “as accurately as possible” because “the true story of the Hemingway’s marriage is so dramatic and compelling, and has been so beautifully treated by Ernest Hemingway himself, in A Moveable Feast, that my intention became to push deeper into the emotional lives of the characters and bring new insights to historical events, while staying faithful to the facts.”

At 18 years during the First World War, Hemingway was wounded in the legs when he was stationed at Fossalta in Italy. Elizabeth Hadley Richardson met Hemingway in Oaks Park near Chicago, after the war in 1920, when Ernest was 21 and she was 28. A year later they married.

Planning on returning to Italy when he had money, Hemingway was talked into going to Paris. When Hadley inherited money from her uncle, they did. “If you want to do any serious work, Paris is the place to be. That’s where the real writers are now,” he was told. Yearning to be a serious writer, Hemingway took his new bride to live in Paris where the American intellectuals were—such as Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, and Sylvia Beach. They set sail on December 8, 1921, leaving Prohibition America behind. The novel is the Paris years—with Hadley known as “the Paris wife” and the first of four wives in Hemingway’s life.

While Hadley cooked and cleaned, her husband rented another room to write without distraction. Virtually alone, Hadley’s persona writes: “If all the women in Paris were peacocks, I was a garden-variety hen.” They head to Toronto for four months so that Hadley can give birth to their first son, John Hadley Hemingway, known as Bumby or Jack.

Returning to Paris in January 1924, family life was “very much at odds with bohemian Paris.” Their new rental apartment on rue Notre-Dame-de-Champs, near the Luxembourg Gardens and a stone’s throw from the best cafes on the Boulevard Montparnasse, had “no hot water, no bathtub, no electric lighting.” Before their fifth wedding anniversary, Hemingway began an affair with Pauline (“Pfife”) Pfeiffer, a wealthy American working for Vogue magazine in Paris. It was the beginning of the end for Hadley, just as Hemingway’s star was rising.

From Hadley’s point of view, the novel touches on Hemingway’s well-documented charm, but it also focuses on his vulnerabilities and insecurities. It is, in essence, about Hadley’s conjectured thoughts, reactions, and responses to Hemingway’s ambition, writing routine, bouts of drinking, holidaying, reporting assignments, times with money, and—most often—times  without.