The Paris Wife by Paula McLain, Virago, $29.99.
Until she was 28 years old, shy, sheltered Hadley Richardson lived an unremarkable life in suburban Missouri. But in 1920 she met a young aspiring writer, married and moved to a tiny flat in Paris.
Her husband was a big drinking man of big ambitions, and his name was Ernest Hemingway. What followed were glorious years of magnificent adventures, fly fishing in Italy, skiing trips, bullfighting festivals and glorious villas in the south of France.
But life in the jazz age fast lane wasn’t kind to the Hemingway marriage. The Paris Wife takes us from love in a Paris garret, to heartbreak in a Cap d’Antibes mansion, fictionalising the story of no-nonsense Hadley with a lively sympathy.
Paula McLain trawls literary Paris between the wars for great characters, with cameos by Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, and Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald, but even among this sparkling crowd, ordinary Hadley shines.
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