Hadley

I love reading and always wish that I was better at setting aside the time for it.  Perhaps it is cliche to say, but there really is nothing quite like getting lost in another time and place through a book.  When I am in drawn in by a good book, I want my metro ride to be a just a little bit longer and the escalator from the metro platform to be just a little bit taller so that I have a few more minutes to escape into that world.   In the last year, one that truly captured me was Paris in the 1920s and the love story of Hadley Richardson and Ernest Hemingway, which is artfully portrayed in The Paris Wife by Paula McLain.

Hadley & Ernest  in 1922

Hadley was Hemingway's first wife and the one who loved him through his years as a struggling writer yearning for recognition and as he wrote The Sun Also Rises.  They moved to Paris shortly after marrying and soon befriended Gertrude Stein, F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald and other influential figures who became known as "The Lost Generation." The author was initially drawn to Hadley through reading Hemingway's memoir of those years in Paris, A Moveable Feast, which he wrote towards the end of his life.  Building on his recollections, Hadley's letters and other accounts of that time and place, she was able to tell Hadley's story in beautiful and compelling fashion.  I won't give anymore away but I will say that the setting and the characters laid out in this book were so fascinating that I was inspired to read The Sun Also Rises AND A Moveable Feast directly afterwards.  I strongly encourage you to get to know the first Mrs. Hemingway...I'm very glad that I did!