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‘What could you possibly be fit for?’ she often said. ‘You can’t keep your head out of the clouds.’
‘The Paris Wife’ is an exaggerated and semi-fictionalized account of the relationship between famed, slightly misogynist, writer Ernest Hemingway and {his first wife – out of four} Elizabeth Hadley Richardson – of whom the above quotation references.
The book is narrated through the eyes and heart of Elizabeth – referred to by all who knew her as Hadley or Hen. The book is heart-filling and heart-wrenching all at the same time. You love and supremely hate Ernest Hemingway in the span of 314 pages. And whether you are a fan of Ernest or not, it is impossible not to become a fan of his red-haired first wife while reading this novel.
She is deliciously self-deprecating and humble about herself:
‘If the women in Paris were peacocks, I was a garden-variety hen,’
‘Mostly I’m a thinker, a worrier … it’s not that there’s no free spirit in me. But it’s a free spirit with a five-year plan’
Have you ever wanted to pack up your life, your pug, and your reality and start over in Paris? Well, cher amis I have! But until that time, the closest I have come to fair París is reading all about it by people who are actually walking the walk.
