The Paris Wife

We met at Jessica's house and enjoyed a Parisian themed meal while discussing Paula McLain's book The Paris Wife.  We had an amazingly deep and thoughtful discussion about Hemingway's life, marriage, relationships in general, and the historical significance of Paris in the 1920's.

Here are some of the points of discussion:

• The overall feel of the book was sad and somewhat depressing because of the lack of fulfillment, disillusionment, alcoholism, hedonistic tendencies of the artistic movement during this time. 


• The book gave a glimpse of the onset of the feminist movement and how that affected the thoughts, desires, roles, dreams of the various woman characters.  We noticed that Hadley's desires seemed fairly traditional.


• In Hemingway's defense, he did have a traumatic childhood and war experience.  We talked about his pattern of falling in love, then leaving to fall in love with someone new.  This led to much discussion about identity, relationship, and love.  Some quotes from our discussion are:  "Be committed to the relationship, not the person because we all change."  "The foundation of your life can't be based on a relationship."  "Let the good be good and the bad be bad without letting it become the idol of your heart."  "Identity- we use other people to tell us who we are, or we use them to distract us from even asking the question."  "Income and satisfaction levels have zero correlation."  


• We were somewhat divided about the level of detail in the author's writing style.  Jackie especially liked the detail because she loves biographies.  Some felt it was too slow at times.  We all enjoyed the historical setting of the book.  The author also used a lot of foreshadowing especially at the ends of each chapter.

Fun Facts

The debate over deckle edge books continues.  Jackie adores them, Becky hates them.  Most likely, we will resort to giving passionate persuasive speeches in order to sway the other ladies (who have no strong opinion on deckle edging) to one side or the other.  (Since I am writing this summary of the evening I will go ahead and use this opportunity to say "Booooooo, Deckle!")

Little known fact: Jackie is a humbug when it comes to decorating for Christmas.

Although Hemingway is one of the best authors of all time, none of us had read any of his books!  Jessica has started one, A Moveable Feast, that is based on his time in Paris in the 20's.

Now, which button do I push?  - Greta