We just finished The Paris Wife by Paula McClain for book club. Reviews and scores over on the main site. Having initially been a little snobbish about this book (serialized on Woman's Hour, that kind of thing), I was completely won over by the vivid recreation of the innner lives of these two people, Ernest Hemingway and his first wife, Hadley Richardson.
Here's Paula McClain giving a little insight into the process of creating her novel; arguably she was brave in trying to tackle through fiction a relationship between two people that was well documented by Hemingway himself (A Moveable Feast). But for me, McClain completely succeeds in bringing the voice of Hadley to life, and through her, offering new insight into the complex, larger-than-life figure of Ernest Hemingway.
The book is set in Paris of the 1920s, but as McClain says, the complexities of the love story between Ernest and Hadley are timeless, and there is much here to enjoy and reflect on. We also particularly liked the way that through Hadley, McClain offers a way into Hemingway – very much considered a man's writer – from the feminine point of view, that yields interesting results. (Sadly our one book-club man, Robert, couldn't make it that evening, so we missed getting his take on it, though he did text to say he'd liked it too.)
And for anyone who has read the book, you might enjoy this old footage of Hemingway, and his onetime mentor and friend Gertrude Stein.