The Paris Wife b y Paula McLain

TAMMY-LEE, don’t read any further!!!! You can borrow the book.

 

I am about halfway through this book.  I am reading this book as part of The Talking Leaf Book Club.  This is our May selection.  I am enjoying it for the most part.  On the Talking Leaf blog, the blog author presents some questions to answer.  I’m not going to answer them directly, but just kinda use them as a jumping off point for my thoughts.  Ok, so I just went and re-read the questions.  Man, I don’t like discussing the specifics of a book.  I am a read-for-pleasure kind of girl!  lol.

 

So what did I think of The Paris Wife to this point?  I think it is well written.  I find the characters easy to relate to from different aspects.  The whole story, so far, is a friendly tale of a couple’s life together. It’s a rocky life. It’s a war-torn, and hard life of an artist and his lover.  It’s the story of a wife and the issues she must face being married to an artsy-fartsy type of man.

 

Hadley and I have very little in common but she is developed to be so personable, in my opinion.  She had her troubles growing up and as a married woman, but she’s different; she’s like me in that.  She’s a “flower-on-the-wall” not a go-get-‘em kind of girl.  I relate to that.  I see her struggles of being married to a dreamer, a planner, an artist.  My husband has those tendencies – to invent, to dream, to create.  And he’s hard on himself, just as Hemingway was hard on himself.

 

I think I am not connecting to the book as well as other readers might because I am unfamiliar with the man – Hemingway and his works – and I have no love affair with Paris, as some in the book club seem to have. :)  Some may read this book – The Paris Wife – and be lead to read more of Hemingway’s works; I can’t say as that’s true for me.  I tried listening to A Moveable Feast and found it dry and uneventful.  Maybe I should have chosen another book to be my introduction to Hemingway.

 

Being only halfway through the book, I don’t know the ending (except I heard rumor there is more heartache ahead).  I don’t like heartache, but it does make a good story.  I haven’t been moved to tears in this book, so it’s not too terribly sad, or the content doesn’t affect me that way, maybe.

 

Onward, ho! I plan to read more of this book on this rainy May day!

 

Striving to learn and live God's purposes,