The Paris Wife

The Paris Wife

by PaulaMcLain (Author)

Synopsis

Chicago, 1920: Hadley Richardson is a quiet twenty-eight-year-old who has all but given up on love and happiness, until she meets Ernest Hemingway. After a whirlwind courtship and wedding, the pair set sail for Paris, where they soon fall in with a circle of lively and volatile expatriates, including F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald and Ezra Pound. Ernest and Hadley are thrust into a life of artistic ambition, hard liquor and spur-of-the-moment dashes to Pamplona, the Riviera and the Swiss Alps. But Jazz Age Paris does not lend itself to family life and fidelity. As Hadley struggles with jealousy and self-doubt, Ernest's ferocious literary endeavours begin to bear fruit, and the couple faces the ultimate crisis of their marriage - a deception that will lead to the unravelling of everything they made for themselves in Paris, their 'great good place'.

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More Information

Format: Hardcover
Pages: 400
Publisher: Virago Press
Published: 03 Mar 2011

ISBN 10: 1844086666
ISBN 13: 9781844086665
Prizes: Shortlisted for Irish Book Awards: RTE Radio 1's The John Murray Show Listeners' Choice Award 2012.

Media Reviews
McLain creates a compelling, spellbinding portrait of a marriage. . . . Women of all ages and situations will sympathize as they follow this seemingly charmed union to its inevitable demise. Colorful details of the expat life in Jazz Age Paris, combined with the evocative story of the Hemingways' romance, result in a compelling story that will undoubtedly establish McLain as a writer of substance. Highly recommended for all readers of popular fiction.
-- Library Journal
McLain offers a vivid addition to the complex-woman-behind-the-legendary-man genre, bringing Ernest Hemingway and his first wife, Hadley Richardson, to life . . . McLain ably portrays the cultural icons of the 1920s--Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald, and Ezra and Dorothy Pound--and the impact they have on the then unknown Hemingway, casting Hadley as a rock of Gibraltar for a troubled man whose brilliance and talent were charged and compromised by his astounding capacity for alcohol and women . . . The heart of the story--Ernest and Hadley's relationship--gets an honest reckoning, most notably the waves of elation and despair that pull them apart.
-- Publishers Weekly

McLain smartly explores Hadley's ambivalence about her role as supportive wife to a budding genius. . . . Women and book groups are going to eat up this novel.
-- USA Today

A beautiful portrait of being in Paris in the glittering 1920s. . . . McLain's vivid, clear-voiced novel is a conjecture, an act of imaginary autobiography on the part of the author. Yet her biographical and geographical research is so deep, and her empathy for the real Hadley Richardson so forthright (without being intrusively femme partisan), that the account reads as very real indeed.
-- Entertainment Weekly
. . . Paula McLain brings Hadley Richardson Hemingway out from the formidable shadow cast by her famous husband. Much more than a woman-behind-the-man homage, thi
Author Bio
Paula McLain received an MFA in poetry from the University of Michigan and has been awarded fellowships from Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, and the National Endowment for the Arts. She is the author of two collections of poetry, as well as a memoir, Like Family, and a novel, A Ticket to Ride. She lives in Cleveland with her family.