I was destined to at least want to like this novel for a few reasons. I'm still high on my Midnight in Paris buzz. Ernest Hemingway's life fascinates me. And it gives me an excuse to listen to my collection of bal musette music. I cannot get enough of French people singing alongside an accordion.

(Just kidding. I don't even need an excuse. The neighbors love me.)

I wouldn't have continued to like this novel though if Paula McLain didn't write so meticulously, as trained poets tend to do, and had she not so almost perfectly captured the voice of Hadley Richardson Hemingway, Ernest's first wife and a love that by many accounts he never really recovered from. The story follows Ernest and Hadley's romance from their first meeting in Chicago in 1920, through their short courtship to their wedding to the eventful years of Paris, Gertrude Stein and Pamplona to their divorce in 1926.

The many literary cameos are dazzling (Stein, John Dos Passos, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sherwood Anderson, Ford Maddox Ford) but the real attraction is the stalwart Hadley and her story is no less dramatic for knowing how it ends-and for that matter, knowing the fate of endless other marriages when one spouse experiences the first vertiginous rush of fame. In this case, Ernest eventually cheats on Hadley with her friend Pauline Pfeiffer. As angry as I got at Ernest (polyamory? Really Ernest?), McLain avoids making him into a caricature or doing a hatchet job. Pauline Pfeiffer comes across much worse but then again, from what other reading I've done there doesn't seem to be a lot of good to say about her-not only did she parasitically attach herself to the Hemingways and sleep with her supposedly close friend's husband, she later was a supporter of the fascists during the Spanish civil war.

There are a few times when Hadley's voice slips and you can almost see the author peering out from behind her, steering the story Oz-like behind the curtain. But maybe it's a measure of how good the facade is otherwise that I even noticed.

And don't feel badly for Hadley. Her life turned out well and she said in one of her rare interviews that as much as she loved Hemingway, the divorce was surprisingly a relief. His moods, rules and the endless catering that his art required were enervating.