In Hemingway's A Moveable Feast, one of my favorite novels, Hadley Hemingway is a strong, straight presence, all tan limbs, but not sexy, just motherly, and strong. I always liked her and felt for her. After all Hemingway ultimately leaves her, and she commits an almost unforgivable deed--en route to Switzerland to meet him on vacation, she packs, then loses every copy of the manuscript of his novel, as well as all the stories he was working on. I say almost unforgivable...but I don't know, for a writer, if a screw up of that magnitude could ever be forgiven or forgotten.
The Paris Wife is a new novel by Paula McClain that tells the story of A Moveable Feast from Hadley's point of view. Aside from aping Hemingway's style of writing from the earlier novel (which I find a little annoying), the story is fascinating. And the later chapters, as Hem and Hadley's relationship begins to fall apart and Hem falls for Hadley's friend Pauline, broke my heart.
A Moveable Feast was always an idealized memory of a time long past--with the bad bits (and Hemingway's own fault in them) glossed over. Or at least that's what I always thought. A Paris Wife gives us a another viewpoint...that perhaps that's how Hemingway viewed himself during those tumultuous months...a victim of circumstance. But at the end, McClain grants him awareness as well as absolution, before the final tragedy of his death by suicide.
A Paris Wife is a vividly drawn recreation of life in Paris, and those early passionate years before Hadley's husband became Ernest Hemingway.
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