The Paris Wife in Bound Together

Sep 05, 2010 Chrissie rated it liked it

Shelves: usa, france, hf, audible-us, 2015-read, austria, love, germany, canada, bio

Which is best to read ? A Moveable Feast or Paris Without End: The True Story of Hemingway's First Wife or this. I cannot say any of them grab me to 100%.

Different points of view, different authors, different styles, fiction or non-fiction ......

The only way to know is to try. Paris Without End: The True Story of Hemingway's First Wife is unfortunately not available. I do prefer biographies. I will start with this and then read A Moveable Feast.

I have in the meantime read a biography on Hemingwa Which is best to read ? A Moveable Feast or Paris Without End: The True Story of Hemingway's First Wife or this. I cannot say any of them grab me to 100%.

Different points of view, different authors, different styles, fiction or non-fiction ......

The only way to know is to try. Paris Without End: The True Story of Hemingway's First Wife is unfortunately not available. I do prefer biographies. I will start with this and then read A Moveable Feast.

I have in the meantime read a biography on Hemingway so the material is not new. However this focused on the writer himself and less on Hadley, his first wife, and some say the true love of his life. He had four wives. So I knew the facts before even picking up the book. I wanted to understand Hadley. I wanted to get inside Hadley's head. I wanted to understand and feel her relationship with Hemingway. This should shed light on Hemingway too. Did the book give me what I was looking for?

Only by the book's end did I get the connection with Hadley that I was searching for. For me, the writing about how their marriage failed was much stronger than the details of how they fell in love. I had to fight the boredom of reading about what I already knew. The dissolution of their marriage was new and written with insight.

I never liked the Hemingways' lifestyle. I was dissatisfied with both Ernest and Hadley. The drinking and partying and incessant complaining, even when on vacation. Everybody knows of Ernest's irascible and egotistical temperament. But Hadley, she sits on her butt and does nothing. Of course she is bored. Get a job, or play the piano, or do whatever you want but do something. Instead she gets a maid...... This is the way it was and this is a book about real events and of course they shouldn't be changed, but I felt nothing but scorn. Why didn't I empathize? Because the dialogs and the lines of the book felt flat. No sizzle. At least Ernest's words could have ignited me, but they didn't. When the marriage fails, you see how Hadley has matured. I like the stronger, more mature Hadley a lot more! Ernest was a hopeless case. I never came to empathize with Ernest, but the biography did not do that for me either, even if he had plenty of problems to cope with too.

The audiobook I listened to is narrated by Carrington MacDuffie. She throws in dialects very well. French pronunciation is fine. The tempo fine too. But she has this funny way of going up at the end of her sentences that is peculiar. Almost like the lines are sung, some of them at least. The narration was fine really; I am just being picky. Except, I did not like her voice for Ernest. Not strong enough.

This is a book about Hadley and her years with Hemingway. It is a book about her much more than him, just as the title indicates. There is a short epilogue that skims VERY briefly over her later life after her divorce from Ernest in January 1927. The book is well researched, but it is not complete and the writing did not excite me.

My next book will be A Moveable Feast. There I will get the strength of Hemingway's writing. Fun to compare the two.
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Jun 06, 2013 ☮Karen rated it really liked it

Shelves: audio, read-in-2015

I have liked the couple of Hemingway novels that I read years ago, but the man himself has never seemed very likeable to me. He did some things in his life, and ended it too, in ways that I do not agree with. But I do enjoy reading about him and other writers of his time--Fitzgerald, Stein, Pound--who spent drunk, seemingly carefree years in Paris. So I have wanted to read The Paris Wife for a long time.

Sure enough, the history of it all was fascinating, but the man was rather disgusting. Oh, he ...more

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Mar 30, 2015 Barbara rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: 2015-book-reads

Hadley is love struck by Ernest Hemingway. They eventually get married and move to Paris where Ernest is desperately trying to find his voice in writing.

Earnest writes a few things but can't seem to get it together. He has been working on a book for years. Hadley has to meet up with Earnest and thinks she's helping when she decides to surprise him with the book he has been working on. His life's work. She loses it. Nothing is backed up. Even though Earnest says he forgives her he eventually has ...more

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May 28, 2018 Laurel Bradshaw rated it liked it

Shelves: themes-wife-titles, audiobook, daytimers-book-club, 1920s, shamrocks-and-stones, paris, authors, color-rating-green

A three-star average book for me. Interesting enough, and well-researched and written, but not a style of writing (leaning toward romancy chick-lit) that I seek out nor a time and place that I am interested in. I read this because it fit my "wife" titles theme, and the bookclub is reading Hemingway next - an author I have never read. If you enjoy Paris, the 1920s, and biographical fiction this would be a lovely book for you. My overall impression of this doomed marriage is that Hadley was woeful ...more

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May 30, 2011 Christina, Join Me on Storygraph! rated it liked it

Shelves: 2012

I'm having a hard time putting my thoughts on this book together. I disliked it pretty much from the beginning, thinking it boring, but yet I couldn't stop reading it. I said on Friday, "Today is the last day." Then Friday came, and I gave it the weekend, then by that point, I had to finish it.

The characters are pretty unlikeable, very narcissistic, and the narrator doesn't really know who she is. Since I wasn't crazy about it, little things drove me nuts, like the constant use of nicknames.

So ...more

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Apr 17, 2011 Pat rated it it was amazing

EXCELLENT novel about Hadley Hemingway! Reminded me of Loving Frank which I also enjoyed immensely which I made my selection to my book club. May do the same for The Paris Wife.

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Feb 26, 2015 Mina rated it really liked it

Shelves: book-club-reads

For a period of time I had grown weary of historical fiction, however this book has made me a fan yet again. A love story with many heartbreaking moments in it.

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