Jen's Journal

A heartfelt story of a young Hadley Richardson as she finds herself falling for one of the greatest writers of all time.

Paula McLain’s The Paris Wife was based in the 1920s before Ernest Hemmingway was the great author he is remembered as today. What captured my attention was not Hemmingway, but what it was like to be his wife in Paris when he was gaining fame as an author.

Hadley was 28 when she first met Hemingway in Chicago. He was charming and full of wild dreams, and Hadley fell in love with him instantly. They married not long after they met and moved to Paris, where they lived for the entirety of their marriage. Hemmingway found a community of writers and artists in Paris, some of which include Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

As an ordinary woman, keeping up with the “Lost Generation” was difficult for Hadley. Hemmingway’s ego grew along with his fame and this meant Hadley struggled to maintain her relationship to him as wife, friend, and muse.

The book follows Hemmingway and Hadley as they lived in the Jazz era in 1920s Paris. When McLain wrote this book, her goal wasn’t to try and capture the style of Hemmingway at all, it was to tell the story of Hadley who was perhaps the only woman Hemmingway ever truly loved. 

Hadley Richardson was the love of Hemmingway’s life. In fact, when he was close to dying, he wrote a book later titled, A Moveable Feast, where he writes about his life in the 1920s. He wrote, “I wish I had died before I ever loved anyone but her.”

Unfortunately, Hemmingway had an affair with the woman who would become his second wife, and this ended the relationship between Hadley and Hemmingway. He had four wives in total, and many mistresses. Yet still, the only person he ever truly loved was Hadley Richardson, and he regretted losing her until the day he died.

This is one of my favorite books to this day. McLain depicted the story of an ordinary woman in the glittery and shinning Paris. Its a book that left me breathless and devastated. It is a story that the world needed; one that portrayed a softer side of Hemmingway in the way he loved and lost Hadley.