The Paris Wife

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Malletts Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / Historical / McLain, Paula	4-week checkout	In transit
Westgate Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / Historical / McLain, Paula	4-week checkout	In transit
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fiction	4-week checkout	Due 04-28-2025
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fiction	4-week checkout	Due 04-16-2025

Meeting through mutual friends in Chicago, Hadley is intrigued by brash "beautiful boy" Ernest Hemingway, and after a brief courtship and small wedding, they take off for Paris, where Hadley makes a convincing transformation from an overprotected child to a game and brave young woman who puts up with impoverished living conditions and shattering loneliness to prop up her husband's career.

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COMMUNITY REVIEWS

The paris wife submitted by cathysanborn on July 16, 2013, 10:23pm Loved it!

so good submitted by airgood on June 27, 2014, 9:18am I loved this book and couldn't put it down!! I read a nonfictional biography about Hadley after reading this and found that the Paris Wife is fairly close to real events. A very enjoyable read! I recommend it to friends often.

This Was Good submitted by Beth Manuel on July 17, 2014, 3:11pm This is a fictional story of Ernest Hemingway and his wife Hadley. He treated her badly. Hard to say how much is based on any truth but the plot and writing kept me reading it.

not sure... submitted by bookher on July 28, 2015, 5:04pm I'm not sure how good this book is because I couldn't get interested in it enough to finish it.

Dry Historical Fiction submitted by zixyxuan on July 31, 2017, 1:06pm For someone that is a huge Hemingway fan, this would have been a spectacular novel. For a person that has never touched a Hemingway book (shame), this book just turned out to be very dry historical fiction for me. This book came off like a travel journal instead of the emotional narrative that I was expecting. Most of the chapters are written in a very flat format that really didn't appeal to me: "we went to Spain, we met these new people, and we did all this cool stuff with them so Ernest could write his novels". Neither of the main characters (Hadley/Ernest) really appealed to me. Hadley obviously had a problem with the way their relationship was turning out, but she still stuck with him (+mistress) for 5 years. I understand that the feminist movement is not what it is today, but she never even bothered to communicate her feelings. Sometimes, Ernest would leave for a couple of days and they would be "fine" again upon the return.

My favorite part of the novel was the ending. They finally figured it out that the relationship wasn't working and decided to get a divorce (spoiler? But not really because Ernest Hemingway had like four wives). The epilogue was pretty spectacular. At the end, she still loves him for the part of her life she was with him, but she ultimately ends up finding a more sustainable relationship.

Overall rating: 3 Stars

Book club's favorite title thus far submitted by A2AE on July 24, 2018, 10:41pm My book club adored this historical fiction novel, and I was so charmed to read an account of Hemingway's Moveable Feast from Hadley's perspective. The author did an incredible amount of research, and our book club meeting really enjoyed the accuracy of the events that we were able to look into and further discuss. This is a must read for any Hemingway fan.

Fun read submitted by kferguson on July 22, 2019, 11:54am This was fun to read on my way to Paris for the first time.

Good submitted by TLW1998 on July 28, 2019, 8:09pm This is a fictional story of Ernest Hemingway and his wife. I don’t know if any of it is true, but it was an entertaining book.

Wife submitted by Anthany on July 14, 2020, 9:24am The Paris wife

Dry but Easy submitted by olarominsky on June 16, 2023, 5:28pm This novel was rather boring, not many elements or anything that particularly stood out to me. The book keeps extending the fact that they were never bound to work out and yet they continue to try, and the end I may be my favorite part. All in all, this book receives an okay!