{"id":15615,"date":"2012-04-18T08:00:15","date_gmt":"2012-04-18T14:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs2.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/?p=15615"},"modified":"2012-04-04T10:51:56","modified_gmt":"2012-04-04T16:51:56","slug":"the-paris-wife-by-paula-mclain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/the-paris-wife-by-paula-mclain\/","title":{"rendered":"The Paris Wife by Paula McLain"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I went into reading The Paris Wife<\/a><\/strong><\/em> by Paula McLain\u00a0with\u00a0a blank slate.\u00a0 I had\u00a0never read any of Ernest Hemingway’s novels, and I knew only the bare minimum of biographical information about his life.\u00a0 This book is a fictionalized account of Hemingway’s first wife Hadley.\u00a0 It details all of the highs and lows of their complicated relationship, from their first meeting in Chicago in 1920 and subsequent whirlwind marriage\u00a0to their years of living in Paris and the unraveling of their once happy life together.\u00a0 Their lives seem glamorous on the surface: spending time with the Fitzgeralds and Gertrude Stein, writing in chic Paris cafes, and taking extended vacations to exotic locales around Europe.\u00a0 But boiling below the surface is a host of problems.\u00a0 As attentive and accommodating as Hadley tries to be, she simply cannot contend with Ernest’s ambition, neediness, and thirst for the drink.<\/p>\n

The story is told through Hadley’s point of view.\u00a0 She grew up in a very different setting, much more conservative and traditional than the Jazz Age Paris of the 1920s, so we’re learning about this time and place through brand new eyes.\u00a0 The writing is lovely and McLain\u00a0is very successful in making\u00a0the time period come alive.\u00a0 Plus, the English major in me got giddy every time a different historical figure popped up in the story.\u00a0 I actually listened to the audio version of\u00a0The Paris Wife<\/a><\/strong><\/em>\u00a0and it was very well done.\u00a0 Even though anyone who knows even a little bit about Hemingway has an idea of how this story ends, it’s still a compelling and engaging read that I would recommend to fans of historical fiction, novels about love and marriage, and Ernest Hemingway.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I went into reading The Paris Wife by Paula McLain\u00a0with\u00a0a blank slate.\u00a0 I had\u00a0never read any of Ernest Hemingway’s novels, and I knew only the bare minimum of biographical information about his life.\u00a0 This book is a fictionalized account of Hemingway’s first wife Hadley.\u00a0 It details all of the highs[Read more]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[361,10,8],"tags":[1763,155,1926,1140],"class_list":["post-15615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-audio-books","category-books","category-staff-picks","tag-1920s","tag-family","tag-hemingway","tag-paris"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pd0CXx-43R","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15615"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15615\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15632,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15615\/revisions\/15632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}