Rather than point a finger at Hemingway, whose behavior often is unconscionable, McLain depicts a genuine human being-flawed, often guilt-ridden, distraught, and utterly unable to control his impulses. Most of The Paris Wife is viewed through Hadley’s center of consciousness, but the few passages imagined by Hemingway add both depth and breadth to the psychological impasse that is growing between the young married couple. Every once in a while, she adds a brief italicized chapter that reveals Hemingway’s interpretation of what is happening to his marriage.
She explains in A Note on Sources that “my intention became to push deeper into the emotional lives of the characters and bring new insight to historical events, while staying faithful to the facts.” She wants to examine the enigma that is Ernest Hemingway and how his self-centered persona dominated his relationship with his first wife, Hadley.Īt the same time, McLain also puts herself inside Hemingway’s creative mind. McLain, however, wants to bring something new to Hadley and Hemingway’s story. Hemingway himself, in A Moveable Feast, wrote about those early years when he was a struggling artist attempting to hone his craft, and many other writers have pictured his life before fame twisted his ego. McLain acknowledges that there already are many fine biographies of the characters she describes. The result isn’t always pretty, but it seems to me to be a convincing picture, not only of literary Paris life in the 1920s, but also of a marriage destined almost from the outset for failure.
Deeply in love, acquiescent, forgiving, and increasingly tormented by her husband’s misbehavior, Hadley describes what most readers already know about Ernest Hemingway but does so from her own particular perspective. McLain chooses a fictional format, populating her novel with a panorama of historic figures while imagining what might have been going on in Hadley’s head. Why do we need yet another book about the life and times of Ernest Hemingway, especially when there are already so many good ones? Because this particular book, The Paris Wife by Paula McLain, portrays the fledgling young writer through the eyes of Hadley Richardson, the woman married to him during those early Paris years.
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