Paris in the 1920's, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, Ernest Hemingway, women bobbing their hair and fighting for the vote, and for equal education with men, or, as Virginia Woolf so eloquently wrote a room of their own. What an exciting, intellectually fertile time and place. By some sort of reverse miracle, Paula McLain writes about Hadley, Hemingway's first wife, and Paris in the 1920's and makes it excruciatingly boring.

Hadley is completely boring. She has no ideas or even real opinions. All she does is sit around and wait for Hemingway to marry him, and, after she does, she sits in her apartment in Paris waiting for him to come home. She does drink a lot and does get drunk--and that sums up Hadley.

We see her completely from the outside. She makes no perceptive comments, ponders no political or philosophical questions, indeed, seems not to notice the intellectual and artistic ferment around her. Ernest has told her about writing "pure," so she recounts that, but with no esthetic judgment or comment. She just says what Ernest is trying to do. Most of the time, however, if she's not having headaches, she is chronicling what jobs he's managed to snag. For this you go to Paris?

Oh, she's a bit careless. On her way to Switzerland to meet Ernest, she manages to lose his case with all his writing in it. Ironically, this is the only instance I recall in this book in which Hadley independently decided to do something. That is, Ernest hadn't asked her to bring the case. She did it on her own.

She also, on her own, forgot her diaphragm. Apparently, she wanted to have a baby, but Ernest didn't. Although she is incredibly passive, she does in this one instance, give Ernest her reason. Guess what? She feels the biological clock ticking. No, she doesn't use that wording, but she does tell her husband that she is already 31 and if she waits she won't be able to get pregnant. The problem with this bit of fiction is that doctors did not yet know about the correlation between fertility and youth. That was a late 20th century discovery.

Again, when Ernest starts his affair with Pauline, who is destined to be wife #2, Hadley's inner turmoil, her rage, the blurred vision of despair, none of this is described. Instead, she does tell Ernest that Pauline is a whore, and, later, bloodlessly tells him she'll give him a divorce. No description of what it's like to be seething with jealousy, the sick feelings of abandonment. If we don't get a clue about what Hadley is thinking and feeling or how she perceives her surroundings, we get even less about Ernest, except for his reason for his unadorned writing style.

At no time did I become emotionally involved with the Paris wife. That is because McLain, who apparently did extensive research about her, never lets us feel what Hadley is feeling. For example, when she lost the writing case, there is no description of any inner turmoil. She is described as running around to look for it, and it is stated that she was annoyed the police, and that she thinks the case was thrown in a dustbin when the thief found it had nothing of value in it. That's it.


When Ernest gets the news that In Our Time was accepted for publication, she does say "It was an epic moment..." but instead of describing Hadley's surge of joy (I presume she must have had one) or her elation so that we could feel as she did, instead we get, "It was the end of Ernest's apprenticeship...He would never again be unknown. We would never again be this happy." When they got the news, how could she have known that? If the book were narrated by an omnicient author, those statements would have been warranted, but it is a first-person narration, and, at this point such a prediction doesn't ring true.


The picture that is painted is of a woman who, except for apparently was willing to have sex with her husband, is the typical 19th century appendage called a wife. She mopes around waiting for her man. She has headaches. When Ernest became famous "...the quintessential Left Bank Writer...the very sort of artist that had made him cringe two years before..."her only reaction is "I didn't want to hold him back. Not when things were finally beginning to hit for him." The noble, long-suffering wife. She says nothing and apparently feels nothing about the fact that he's clearly distancing himself from her. She should have been in a turmoil of emotions or at least felt sad, instead she says, in effect, "it's okay if he throws me out with the trash, so long as he's happy." In sum, Hadley is portrayed as vapid, uninteresting, uninspired.

I have read biographies with more emotional impact than this--far more emotional impact. Oh, I almost forgot, on p. 113, she does have a feeling: "...I felt a cold rush go through me." This is in response to her hearing about the possibility of another war.

Perhaps if the writing itself had not been so pedestrian, this would have been more palatable. There are scenes set in Switzerland and Italy--places with gorgeous mountain views, spectacular sunsets, charming or splendid architecture. Yet, McLain doesn't describe the wonders of these settings. Instead she writes like a travel guide, letting us know locations.

If you have a special interest in Hadley or Ernest, perhaps you will like this more than I did. What makes me wonder are the comments of Nancy Horan who wrote the magnificent, compelling, bio-novel of a married woman's affair with Frank Lloyd Wright, Loving Frank. She says "This remarkable novel about Ernest Hemingway's first marriage is mesmerizing. Hadley's voice, lean and lyrical, kept me in my seat, unable to take my eyes and ears away from these young lovers. Paula McLain is a wonderful writer who creates a world you don't want to leave. I loved this book."

I have enormous respect for Nancy Horan and her writing, so maybe I'm just a grinch. I could barely finish this book. I never felt as if I was in a fictional world, and I found the writing pedestrian to the point of plodding. Go figure.