Yesterday and today it was The Paris Wife, by Paula McLain. It was strange to be reading a novel based on a real person's life, especially since I had already read a scholarly biography of this woman and her husband, who happened to be Ernest Hemingway.
I almost didn't want to read it because I already knew the ending. They couldn't keep it together. It wasn't in him or them. He strayed, which is a nice way of saying that he ditched his wife for another woman.
As I was getting to the place in the story where the Other Woman makes her appearance, I didn't want to read on. I wanted to be spared that unhappiness. I made excuses for not reading. I got up and refilled my glass of iced tea. Then I came back and read, dreading the inevitable.
Hadley Richardson was the "Paris wife," Hemingway's first of four wives, and according to this novel, many other women besides.
I wanted the story to be like one of those juvenile novels where the reader gets to choose the ending. If you want such-and-such a thing to happen, turn to page 56. If you want some other thing to happen, turn to page 72.
Only it wasn't like that. The events of the novel, told in the first person through the voice of Hadley Richardson, closely followed the events of her and her husband's life as it is recorded in Hemingway's novels, autobiography, and the scholarly biography by the late Michael Reynolds.
No amount of wishing or stalling could change it.
It was sad, but I loved to hear the story from Hadley's point of view.
Even if you're not a Hemingway aficionado, this is a good read.
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