#TheParisWife – Rosepoint Publishing

Still continuing with wet and wild weather, currently in a cool to cold pattern. We always get this setback going into Spring, but it’s annoying when you want to start the gardens. As if I didn’t already have enough, I’ve started a small water garden—really just a 26” bowl—should be deeper but couldn’t find one. At 26” though, I should be able to have a couple water lilies and an iris or two along with the free floaters. Preparing the water takes more time than expected. Once again, a big learning curve! I mentioned last month we were taking down the old tree in front of the kitchen window. This will fill in that void. (Too cold for the plants.)

water bowl with a couple baby plants

Still going to our YMCA three times a week for exercise and to mark our insurance calendar. The Y continues to invent activities for us seniors—gotta keep us busy, I guess, but the cooking class was fun and now supplies me with fresh veggies once a month for several months, Bingo, a painting class for the CE, and my book club, of course. Hard to get our reading done, though, there are many opportunities for listening!

The CE and I read or listened to a total of fourteen books in April. As always, the major source of our books is the library (audiobooks and ebooks). (We still obtain ARCs from NetGalley (though not as often) and author and publisher requests.) The links on titles are to our reviews that include purchase information.

Iron Curtain by Russ Stone (CE review)
Murder on the Marlow Belle by Robert Thorogood
Brimstone Hollow by Archer Sullivan
Fool by Mary Lawrence (5*)
Midnight Patriots by Paul Levine (CE review-NG-5*)
And Now, Back to You by B K Borison

Audiobooks

The Astral Library by Kate Quinn
The Paris Wife by Paula McLain
Her Last Breath by Taylor Adams
The Last Word by Taylor Adams
Free Ride by Noraly Schoemaker
By Any Other Name by Jodi Picoult
Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane
Hidden Pictures by Jason Rekulak

Favorite Book of the Month

Both the CE and I each had one five-star read in April, but I happen to know he felt a bit of slowing in the middle of his book. Therefore, the favorite book for April and my only five-star review is:

Favorite for April – Fool by Mary Lawrence

My Reading Challenges page…I keep hoping to catch up. My Goodreads count is still off, and the landing page shows 53 of a challenge of 175 with one book owing a review from April and four books behind schedule. Oops.

To all my dear readers and fellow bloggers, thank you so much for taking the time to check out my posts and reviews. I’m trying to up my bloghopping and hope to see yours soon.

overloaded desk

Book Club at the YMCA

Best Books of the Year 2011

Nominee for Favorite Book of 2011, Winner for Readers’ Favorite Historical Fiction (2011), Nominee for Readers’ Favorite Goodreads Author (2011)

Sorry, but this one was regarding Ernest Hemingway—not my fav. We have to remember it’s a novel and certainly not penned by Wife Number One, Hadley Richardson. At twenty-eight years old in Chicago 1920, she definitely would have been termed a “spinster.” I don’t think it was the Jazz Age Paris that set Hemingway into a hard-drinking social life with some cronies who were already achieving name recognition, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, and F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. I think the man, well ahead of the myth, was already a hard-drinking narcissist who pulled Hadley along for the ride. And when it ended. It ended.

But what a ride it was!

This is the book club selection for March, discussed rather low key at our April meeting.

My Thoughts

Hadley experienced a tragic childhood, from the suicide of her father to the death of a sister in a fire. Neither his family nor hers had been thrilled with the two together. Hadley was considered the old maid at 28 and Hemingway back from the war at just nineteen.

After she met Hemingway and together enjoyed a whirlwind romance, they were married in 1921. Shortly after, they moved to Paris where he struck up with contacts during his fledgling foreign correspondent days and Gertrude Stein in turn introduced him to additional authors who fed his need for the spotlight and his ego.

Living a fast-paced Bohemian life took a toll on the marriage; the drinking, the free-wheeling moral code, his lust writing the Great American Novel…and women. Her discovery of his affair with her friend, however, became the final straw.

Many thanks to our local well-stocked library for providing me with the opportunity to listen to and review this audiobook. The thoughts expressed here are my own as well as my interpretation of the consensus of the book club participants.

Book Club Thoughts

The publisher provides pointed questions for discussion at the book club.

The Paris Wife - UK cover — The Paris Wife – UK cover

Among the items specifically examined this time were:

►We were reminded a couple times that this book is fiction, a novel, not a biography. We can draw some conclusions but would have to independently research key details of interest.

►A big question regarding what her perceived role was, with the majority feeling it was to feed his ego, and unfortunately, following his success, no longer needed that extra support.

►We wondered what Hadley might have seen in him and the consensus generally felt that he took her out of her expected lonely, spinster life to one of discovering the big world out there.

►A big point of discussion was the loss of his entire work to date when she traveled to meet him. Did he ever really forgive her for losing all his manuscripts? Perhaps we’ll never know.

There were additional questions and discussions, of course, one being the lifestyle and the hard drinking of Paris life, and the contradiction of Hadley’s acquiescence to attending the running of the bulls (and death of the animals) by occupying herself with crocheting baby clothes.

Book Club rating vote

Book Details:

Publisher: Random House Audio
Narrator: Carrington MacDuffie
Publication Date: February 22, 2011

Title Link(s):

Amazon-US | Amazon-UK | Barnes & Noble | Kobo

The Author: Paula McLain is the author of the New York Times bestselling novels The Paris Wife, Circling the Sun, Love and Ruin, and When the Stars Go Dark. Her latest novel, Skylark, a GMA January 2026 pick, is a mesmerizing tale of Paris above and below, revealing a story of courage and resistance that transcends time. McLain was born in Fresno, California in 1965. After being abandoned by both parents, she and her two sisters became wards of the California Court System, moving in and out of various foster homes for the next fourteen years. When she aged out of the system, she supported herself by working as a nurse’s aid in a convalescent hospital, a pizza delivery girl, an auto-plant worker, a cocktail waitress–before discovering she could (and very much wanted to) write. She received her MFA in poetry from the University of Michigan in 1996, and is the author of two collections of poetry, a memoir, Like Family: Growing Up in Other People’s Houses, and the debut novel, A Ticket to Ride. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, O: the Oprah Magazine, Good Housekeeping, Real Simple, Huffington Post, the Guardian and elsewhere.