Sometimes, when you don't get a hundred percent into a novel, it's only fair to proclaim: "It's not you, it's me". Why on earth would someone without a solid interest in the home life of Ernest Hemingway (in this case me) read a book on Hemingway's first wife?
My excuse is a weak one: I was drawn to the title. I found Paula McLain's novel The Paris Wife, published as far back as 2011, in a well-stocked bookstore, remembered vaguely that it was well thought of, and bought it. The blurb promised that the setting would be "glamorous Jazz Age Paris", and that sounded exciting. It would also, I reasoned, be a way to learn a little more about an author I haven't read, though I really should have done. Although there's no language barrier to speak of, I'm scandalously ignorant about American classics. It will be remedied at some point, at least in Hemingway's case (and when it happens I'll be able to get at least one Nobel Prize-winner blog post out of it).
Is it a disadvantage to be pig-ignorant about Hemingway when you read this novel? At first I thought so, and felt slightly guilty for attempting it. It's not that I don't get why it was favourably received. McLain fights the corner of her protagonist, Hadley Richardson, very commendably and is good at showing, not telling.
We're shown, not told, that Hadley is no victim but quite tough. She survives a bleak upbringing with some self-worth still intact; she can knock back liquor with the best (and worst) of them; she enjoys the bullfights her husband's obsessed with and isn't the least bit squeamish; she's physically strong and can even cross the Alps wearing the wrong kind of shoes. We're shown, not told, of Hemingway's faults, which aren't very endearing (but then he's very young at this time): he's spectacularly ungrateful to his benefactors and feels easily threatened, as when he scowls over a less-macho friend's fleeting success at amateur bull-fighting. Lastly, we're shown, not told, how the ménages-à-trois Hadley and Hemingway are surrounded with – which aren't very happy if scrutinised, especially not for the women – warp Hemingway's perception of what he can get away with while still hanging on to the wife he loves.
So why didn't I get fully into the first half and a bit of this novel? I think it was because it sometimes felt like a corrective narrative of something, and I didn't know anything about the story it was correcting. Also, though we do get to meet well-known Jazz-Age Paris dwellers, the focus – as I should have predicted – was on Hadley's and her Ernest's married life. It's convincingly described, but sometimes made me think about Goofy's novel about a man "who went around looking ordinary all day". Not because Hadley herself seems ordinary compared to her famous husband – another pitfall avoided by McLain – but because their domestic life feels rather mundane a large part of the time. This is, of course, less of a problem if you go into the story with a keen interest in all things Hemingway.
Once we finally get to the love triangle foreshadowed at the beginning of the novel, however, my pig-ignorance turned out to be a boon. Although Hadley warns the reader in the prologue: "This isn't a detective story – not hardly", I enjoyed trying to predict which Paris siren would be the one to make a serious play for Hemingway and threaten what appears to be a rock-solid marriage. If you already know a lot about Hemingway's life, then this part of the story doesn't become a mystery, which would have taken a lot of the fun out of it for me.
If you're a Hemingway fan, I think you'd like this novel in its entirety, not least because it throws some light on a wife who actually seems to have been the perfect match for him. If, like me, you know next to nothing about him, it's still a good read. Just don't expect too much razzle dazzle out of Paris.
