bon jour readers...

i am back from paris, sadly. to say i loved it would be an understatement. i am already planning to go back next fall (no joke). i will fill you in on my parisian adventures later this week, but first i must spill my guts about the book we have been reading for this months book group meeting, the paris wife (fitting right?)...


if you haven't read this book, do so, now. aside from being able to visualize myself in paris as ernest hemingways first wife, hadley richardson, just by the shear fact of being in paris at the time i was reading the book, i was also able to connect with her on a much more personal level...

ernest & hadley

i have felt the fear of being in love with someone so much that you are willing to give up yourself to support their every wish/desire/career/etc. there were parts of the book that i found myself literally crying out loud during, my heart aching for her...like when her husband started having an affair with her good friend pauline pfeiffer...

ernest & pauline

at first i thought she was a weak woman for putting up with so much, for being ernest's emotional support for so long... but i ended up greatly admiring her by the end of the book, she may just be the strongest character of them all...or at least she kept her poise and morals. however, i am still amazed at how she continued to hold ernest in the highest regard, after all that he did to her.

since finishing this book i have become fascinated by their relationship and i'm now going to read ernest hemingways last novel, a moveable feast. the book was not published during hemingway's life, but edited from his manuscripts and notes by his widow and fourth wife. It was published in 1964, three years after hemingway's death. the memoir consists of hemingway's personal accounts, observations, and stories of his experience in 1920s with his first wife, hadley, and features many of the prominent people who they associated with; ezra pound, f. scott fitzgerald, john dos passos, gertrude stein. apparently there were some major edits when this book was put together by his fourth wife, the one i am most interested in being the deletion of ernest's lengthy apology to hadley. the apology does apparently appear in various forms in every draft of the book but was probably deleted by his fourth wife because it impugned her own role as wife...