Critical Praise

"Despite all that has been written about Hemingway by others and by the man himself, the magic of THE PARIS WIFE is that this Hemingway and this Paris, as imagined by Paula McLain, ring so true I felt as if I was eavesdropping on something new. As seen by the sure and steady eye of his first wife, Hadley, here is the spectacle of the man becoming the legend set against the bright jazzed heat of Paris in the 20s. As much about life and how we try and catch it as it is about love even as it vanishes, this is an utterly absorbing novel."

—Sarah Blake, New York Times bestselling author of THE POSTMISTRESS

"McLain offers a vivid addition to the complex-woman-behind-the-legendary-man genre, bringing Ernest Hemingway and his first wife, Hadley Richardson, to life....The heart of the story --- Ernest and Hadley's relationship --- gets an honest reckoning, most notably the waves of elation and despair that pull them apart."

—Publishers Weekly

"Told in the voice of Ernest Hemingway’s first wife, THE PARIS WIFE, by Paula McLain, is a richly imagined portrait of bohemian 1920s Paris, and of America literature’s original bad boy."

—Town & Country

"Novelist and memoirist Paula McLain traces the life of Hadley Hemingway, first wife of Ernest Hemingway, in this evocative novel set largely in Paris in the Jazz Age."

—Christian Science Monitor

"THE PARIS WIFE is mesmerizing. Hadley Hemingway’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 first-rate writer who creates a world you don’t want to leave. I loved this book."

—Nancy Horan, New York Times bestselling author of LOVING FRANK

"After nearly a century, there is a reason that the Lost Generation and Paris in the 1920’s still fascinate. It was a unique intersection of time and place, people and inspiration, romance and intrigue, betrayal and tragedy. THE PARIS WIFE brings that era to life through the eyes of Hadley Richardson Hemingway, who steps out of the shadows as the first wife of Ernest, and into the reader’s mind, as beautiful and as luminous as those extraordinary days in Paris after the Great War."

—Mary Chapin Carpenter, singer and songwriter