With 20 out of 22 reviewers rating it 4 or 5 stars, The Paris Wife is a clear favorite amongst BookBrowse readers, and has inspired many to revisit classic works by Ernest Hemingway.
Paula McLain sympathetically captures Hadley Richardson's voice in this highly addictive, page-turning debut. She pushes deep in to the lives of her characters while remaining true to the facts (Jill S). The narrative is very compelling! I was hooked by the first chapter and it never let up, and despite knowing how the marriage ended, I was riveted (Michele J). Perhaps the author's greatest strength is that her writing style is much like Hemingway's - crisp, clear, and concise (Mary S). I felt I was living in this unstable world and sympathized with Hadley as she watched her marriage fall apart while Ernest became more and more concerned with his own reputation and with fitting into a world that she could not accept. If for no other reason, the novel is worth reading for taking us back to a time many of us know little about (Sandra H)...
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(Reviewed by BookBrowse First Impression Reviewers).
Media Reviews
Entertainment Weekly
By making the ordinary come to life, McLain has written a beautiful portrait of being in Paris in the glittering 1920s — as a wife and one's own woman. Grade: A-
The Chicago Sun-Times
McLain recreates the well-trodden territory of the Lost Generation with more skill and effect than anything written in recent years.
The New York Times
Get ready for abundant debate on issues raised by The Paris Wife, because what it lacks in style is made up for in staying power. This is a work of literary tourism that expertly flatters its reader. It invokes an artist-packed Paris where "nearly anyone might feel like a painter."
The Los Angeles Times
The problem with this book-length swoon is that writer and reader overlook cliché after cliché, pedestrian writing and overpowering sentiment.
Kirkus Reviews
Starred Review. An imaginative, elegantly written look inside the marriage of Ernest Hemingway and Hadley Richardson.
Library Journal
Starred Review. 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.
Booklist
Much more than a "woman-behind-the-man" homage, this beautifully crafted tale is an unsentimental tribute to a woman who acted with grace and strength as her marriage crumbled.
Publishers Weekly
...[A] vivid addition to the complex-woman-behind-the-legendary-man genre...The historical figure cameos sometimes come across as gimmicky, but the heart of the story - Ernest and Hadley's relationship - gets an honest reckoning...
After nearly a century, there is a reason that the Lost Generation and Paris in the 1920's still fascinate. It was a unique intersection of time and place, people and inspiration, romance and intrigue, betrayal and tragedy. The Paris Wife brings that era to life through the eyes of Hadley Richardson Hemingway, who steps out of the shadows as the first wife of Ernest, and into the reader's mind, as beautiful and as luminous as those extraordinary days in Paris after the Great War.
The Paris Wife is mesmerizing. Hadley Hemingway's voice, lean and lyrical, kept me in my seat, unable to take my eyes and ears away from these young lovers. Paula McLain is a first-rate writer who creates a world you don't want to leave. I loved this book
Despite all that has been written about Hemingway by others and by the man himself, the magic of The Paris Wife is that this Hemingway and this Paris, as imagined by Paula McLain, ring so true I felt as if I was eavesdropping on something new. As seen by the sure and steady eye of his first wife, Hadley, here is the spectacle of the man becoming the legend set against the bright jazzed heat of Paris in the 20s. As much about life and how we try and catch it as it is about love even as it vanishes, this is an utterly absorbing novel.
Is The Paris Wife accurate?
The story of their romance and marriage has been fictionalized in Paula McLain's new novel, The Paris Wife. Hadley Richardson appears here and there in Hemingway's book about his Paris years, A Moveable Feast — and these glimpses of Hemingway's first wife caught McLain's eye.
Is The Paris Wife Based on a true story Wikipedia?
It is a fictionalized account of Ernest Hemingway's marriage to the first of his four wives, Hadley Richardson. McLain decided to write from Hadley's perspective after reading A Moveable Feast, Hemingway's 1964 posthumously published account of his early years in Paris.
How does The Paris Wife end?
The epilogue reveals that Hadley's second marriage is a happy and successful one, while Ernest goes on to marry several other women and divorce them all before ultimately ending his own life.
What is the book about Hemingway's third wife?
Love and Ruin: A Novel.