I’m 100% behind the curve in reading The Paris Wife by Paula McLain.
I had the opportunity to hear Paula speak at the Madison Public Library a few weeks ago. I’d never heard of her work, and never read her books, but I was volunteering to help run her talk and signing – and I am so glad I did! Her words about writing during the margins in a busy season of life were so encouraging to someone who feels like they are just plodding through their first novel. Paula was funny and engaging and so very concerned with capturing the voices of women who haven’t been heard by history.
The Paris Wife is told from the perspective of Hadley Richardson, Ernest Hemingway’s first wife. Knowing that she is his first – and knowing that he had many – I was curious how reading a novel that I already knew the ending to would go. Would I care about the characters? Would I like them? Well, I did, wholeheartedly. I could not help rooting for Hadley and her marriage and for Hemingway to pull his head out of the sand (spoiler: he doesn’t, but you knew that, didn’t you?). I sobbed for Hadley when the time came. She owned her own story, even when she didn’t have much of a chance. And I loved her for it.
Favorite Quotes from The Paris Wife:
“I wasn’t reading the pages then, but I trusted his feeling about them and trusted the rhythm of every day.” – p. X
“I was tired of being sensible.” – p. 14
“My life was my life; I would have to stare it down, somehow, and make it work for me.” – p. 21
“Ernest and Nick weren’t the same guy, but they knew a lot of the same things.” – p. 128
“It’s like someone has taken a broom to his insides and swept them out until everything’s clean and bright and hard and empty.” – p. 135
” ‘ When does it mean something? When everyone finally gets smashed to bits?’ ” – p. 145
” ‘ I’m trying to want this.’ ” – p. 154
“That laugh would eventually set off a series of events, but not yet. It just stood there in the room, tipping and tipping, but not falling. Not falling yet. Not quite.” – p. 199
“Her edges were already blurred when she stood to shake our hands, and she looked as if she cultivated that – a fine blurriness.” – p. 203
“I want things to make sense again. They haven’t in a long time.” – p. 212
“I couldn’t be new.” – p. 242
What made this a good story?
This novel captured the feel of 1920s Paris – the pace and the places and the people. It handled gently the time in history when people had to idea how to move forward, still reeling from what they has seen in the great war. It gives you a view into the lives of artists like Hemingway and Ezra Pound and F. Scott Fitzgerald, but from the perspective of a young woman yearning for wholeness, not more excess.
If you like historical fiction and memoir, if you like rooting for the character telling the story, and if you like to see strong women make their own decisions – this is a novel you should read as soon as possible.
I can’t wait to dive into Paula McLain’s newest novel, Circling the Sun, about Beryl Markham and her life in Africa.
Have you read The Paris Wife by Paula McLain? What did you think?
P.S. Like this book? I recommend The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman OR The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert.
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