The Paris Wife by Paula McLain

I finished “The Paris Wife” by Paula McLain. This is a story told from the perspective of Ernest Hemingway’s first wife, Hadley Richardson. It is a fictional account of what their life was like. The author did study their history and the story was based on fact, but of course it was not actually written by Hadley, so fictional. I am guessing the author injected what she thought Hadley’s thoughts may have been about his behavior and her experiences. To be honest, I don’t know that much about Hemingway himself, so I am not sure exactly what I was expecting from the book. I guess I thought it would be a romantic story about the two of them in a bohemian Parisian adventure. There were those aspects in the book, but it also shown some negative light on that lifestyle. We were introduced to some of the people and places they visited during their time together.

As far as the writing, I felt the relationship between Hadley and Ernest was very superficial. The way they would talk to each other, they seemed to be acquaintances, not two people with an intimate relationship. When we knew what Hadley was thinking, she would think about how close they were, so the characters thought they were close, but the language and interactions between the two fell a little flat.

Hemingway seems like some piece of work. I sure would not have put up with him for as long as she did. I am guessing some of his personality traits were based on research and were accurate. He was not a nice guy, that’s for sure. The story was interesting, and looking at it from a viewpoint on Hadley rather than their relationship it was more interesting. The time in history that this took place, there were a lot of changes for women. Many of them were becoming more independent and she herself went through a lot of changes.

3/5

11/22/63 by Steven King

Okay, I said I would write about some other topics as well, and I just finished the book 11/22/63 by Steven King. I wanted to share my review with you all!

This is about a high school English teacher named Jake Epping, who is asked to travel through a "rabbit hole" into the year 1958 (from 2011). The idea, is that he will live in the past until the year 1963 and stop the assassination of Kennedy on November 22nd of that year (hence the title). He has learned that the past does not want to be changed, and the larger the change, the more obstacles someone would have to overcome in order to make the change. The book follows him over the several years he lives in the past, and his detective work to see if Oswald was the assassin and/or if there were someone else involved. As anyone would, who lived in a new place for a while, he makes friends and begins to feel at home in the past. This complicates things when he thinks about going home again. What will happen, when the date in question is over? Will he have stopped the assassination? Will he be able to leave his new friends? Will he get back to the “rabbit hole” and the year 2011 to see how much better the world would have been had Kennedy lived?

This book really kept my interest. It was not scary or a horror story. It was suspenseful. I was always excited to know what would happen next. He does tie in several other books. Jake has a bit of time in Derry, and references are made to children being murdered by a man dressed as a clown (It) and Eddie disappearing (The Dark Tower Series). There are several references to Kennedy in his other books as well. It’s always a lot of fun to have his stories take place in his own unique world, and having them tie into each other. I have not read a lot of his books, so I am sure I missed a lot of the references, but you don’t have to know them in order to follow the story. This is one hunk of a read at about 850 pages, but well worth it.

I don’t know a lot about the Kennedy assassination, and all the conspiracies and theories surrounding it, but King really did his homework when he was writing the book. It all seems extremely plausible that events could have happened as he described - minus the time travel! If you like mystery and suspense I would recommend this as a great escape into the past.

I gave it a 4/5