“The Paris Wife” by Paula McLain – The Lost Generation

Hadley Richardson is a very quiet and unassuming twenty year-old lady who has given up on the chance of ever finding true love and happiness in her life. However, as fate usually does, it threw a wrench in her plans by introducing her to one of the century’s most influential authors, Ernest Hemingway. The passion that joins them seems to know no weakness, and soon after the wedding, they set sail for Paris and become part of a very interesting group of people: the Lost Generation, including F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein.

Regardless of the love they both feel for each other, Hadley and Ernest start having a hard time as the constant drinking, risk-taking, love and omnipresent Jazz make for a lot to handle, both of them struggling with their own demons.

Ernest, on one hand, is still trying to come up with that one novel that will immortalize him, while Hadley is having an identity crisis, trying to hold on to the person she was before Paris, and finding it increasingly complicated to comply with all the roles she is expected to fulfill. Ultimately, every good thing must come to an end, and that end begins in the form of a deception and betrayal.

First off, while The Paris Wife by Paula McLain this isn’t exactly a biography, it isn’t completely fictive either. Rather, it’s a bit of a romanticized look at the life Ernest led with Hadley, who arguably played a very important role in his life, perhaps more important than the one he played in hers. The whole story is made even more touching by the fact that after all was said and done, Ernest admitted that he would have rather been dead than fall in love with anyone apart from Hadley.

This is one of those novels that isn’t exactly about the end of it, but about the trip. It’s about a bygone era that very soon no one will remember, Paris in the 1920s. It was a time when people were breaking out of their cocoons and flourishing in a free-spirited way, a time when some of the greatest minds in the century were still alive. 

I have to add that the whole cast of this novel is simply fascinating to behold, including the celebrities mentioned above (Fitzgerald, Pound and Stein). Seeing them all interact with each other in informal ways as friends would brings a sort of comic light-heartedness to this book that is mainly a drama and an exploration of how love and loyalty can impact a person’s life and change it forever. 

All in all, The Paris Wife presents an enthralling account of Hemingway’s life (amongst other things), and is definitely worth a read for those who want to learn a bit more about that magical era.

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Paula McLain Paula McLain is an author of American origin whose fictionalized account of Ernest Hemingway's first marriage, titled The Paris Wife, became a bestseller in the New York Times. In addition she also published a nonfiction memoir titled Like Family, and a couple of poetry works titled Less of Her and Stumble, Gorgeous.