But rather than using this surely complicated moment to give Hadley some shading, McLain presents her as a fountain of tearful remorse. Hadley was the one responsible for losing all of Hemingway's early drafts and papers (she left a valise carrying the manuscripts on a train, and it was stolen).

What is best about this novel is its evocative nostalgia for that time and place.īut it misses many opportunities. It is pleasurable to immerse oneself in the wonderful aromas of the Left Bank, to drink absinthe in the cafés of Paris and to watch the running of the bulls in Pamplona. Because that time and those characters have been exhaustively memorialized, she may have been daunted by too much material and a magnificent cast, including Sherwood Anderson, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, and F. McLain works hard to inhabit Hadley's point of view, but there is little inventiveness discernible. Those Paris years are carefully chronicled in this textual docudrama. As Hemingway grew more and more invested in his writing (and in other relationships), the marriage slowly unravelled, until he and Hadley divorced in 1927. But within four months, they returned to Paris.

Hemingway was a foreign correspondent for The Toronto Star, and the couple returned to Toronto, where Hadley gave birth to their son in October, 1923. Together they took part in the expatriate life of Paris in the '20s, travelling to Italy, Germany and Spain, all sites Hemingway ransacked for material. Her attraction seems to have been her absolute faith in Hemingway's talent, along with a small but useful inheritance and a willingness to follow him anywhere. What connected them? Hadley was neither literary nor worldly, although she was a reasonably good pianist.

The paris wife novel