A Review of The Paris Wife by Joseph Grant

Thank you to Joseph Grant for his enthusiastic review of Paula McClain’s new novel, The Paris Wife, which was released today. Joseph is a writer with over 200 published short stories. He is an avid reader and wonderful resource on all things Hemingway and the Lost Generation. You can contact him at  JPG8820@aol.com

The Paris Wife is the story of the Hemingways in Paris, namely Hadley Hemingway. It is a story told from a unique perspective; that of Hadley herself. Countless biographers have poured over the minutiae of Ernest’s life and writing, but few have given Hadley her due. As if taking a subconscious cue from Gertrude Stein’s salon, biographers usually relegate Hadley to a background character of Ernest’s epic story. Depending on the biographer, Hadley is either the one to blame for his early failures, say, in losing the valise or the one to praise for being his muse. In this way, we never get to know the real Hadley. So, it was with great pleasure that I read The Paris Wife, a story unlike any other one may read this year.

The uniqueness about this novel is that it finally gives Hadley a voice. The novel is told from her perspective, in the first person and lets one into her thoughts, as it were. Finely crafted by the talented Ms. McLain, one never feels that this is a fictitious novel but the story of Hadley told by herself. Using letters and other resources, the book is deeply and lovingly researched to the finest detail and while some writers would stumble and fall with such source material, Ms. McLain’s prose soars seamlessly through the ages and plants the reader directly inside the shared life of Hadley and Ernest Hemingway, first in Chicago and then among the expatriates in Lost Generation Paris.

The prose is written in such a concise manner that the reader is given a “you are there” viewpoint and Ms. McLain has done the impossible. You feel the wind along the Seine, you smell the chestnut trees in bloom, you experience all the sights, sounds and smells of Jazz Age Paris. The City of Light of 1925 is alive once again! Whether unwittingly or not, Ms. McLain has stuck by the Hemingway and Ezra Pound credo of making new and real for the reader what has been well-worn and often trod literary cobblestones as if for the very first time, such is her wonderful fictional gift. Fiction works best when it doesn’t read like fiction and this is expressly what works about The Paris Wife.

You feel the trepidation of the two young lovers as they leave America and sail to Paris and the homesickness that they feel once getting there. You experience the strengths and weaknesses of Hadley as well as her determination to be her own person, less of her husband’s shadow, the way other artist’s wives behaved during this time period. You feel her humility and her tenderness as well as her staunch determination to make things work in her new marriage. You feel the near-suffocating loneliness of Hadley, the new bride, having to bid adieu to her Ernest as he goes to cover stories abroad for The Toronto Star and how she and bides her time playing piano, escapes their tiny apartment and goes exploring Paris, observing its beautiful as well as its not-so-pretty underside. As one reads on, one feels like a literary doppelgänger or a welcomed interloper accompanying the forlorn Hadley as she walks through Paris, meets with Sylvia Beach for tea or with Gertrude Stein and the ever-present Alice B. Toklas. The reader also experiences her joy when Ernest returns, her disappointment in their losing at their favorite racetrack at Auteuil. One of the many returns the reader obtains from reading this book is that it is all there. All the drama and dipsomania of the Lost Generation, as well as its many triumphs and tragedies.

A rose is a rose is a rose, Stein famously once said and if that is true, then Paris is the garden in which this Hadley blooms. We discover her as she is discovering her own sense of self. We learn that she is no longer a self-confessed spinster rescued by the attentions of the young and dashing war veteran Ernest Hemingway, but a strong-willed person who is saved by the love of Hemingway as much as he is damned by the loss of her love. Hadley comes away from the book the stronger person for her time in Paris. She is truly “Winner Take Nothing” in this sense. Hemingway, I’ve always believed was too stubborn and young to realize what had truly been lost until much later. He had been boxed into the corner, against the ropes and rather than throw the towel in, he fought back, much to his mistake. He would write of her until his dying day while other Hemingway wives were not so adored from such a distance or even closeness.

I would certainly place this book as the companion piece next to Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast. I urge all Hemingway fans to take a break from their lives and lesser books and step back to a time and place that was once 1920′s Paris and pick up this book. Ms. McLain is an extremely talented writer and deserves to be read far and wide. While the Paris of the 1920′s is no longer attainable, going there in the mind is and do yourself a favor-read this book. It’s the closest to being there.
By Joseph Grant