Of course the case is lost, and the disaster exposes a fault line between the pair that's only further strained when Hadley discovers she's pregnant.įull of mistrust after these inadvertent betrayals, Ernest is ripe for the seductive advances of Pauline Pfeiffer, a "pretty otter" of a woman who will eventually become Mrs Hemingway number two. The first ripple of disharmony comes when Hadley decides to bring all Ernest's manuscripts – three years of work, copies included – with her in a valise to a rendezvous in Switzerland. He writes, she cooks, and they drink away the evenings "until we were beautifully blurred and happy to be there together". Ernest and Hadley – Tatie, as they call each other – begin their expat life in a flush of love. The difference between the two is that the action here is largely seen through Hadley's eyes the domestic takes precedent and there is more emotion and exposition than Papa would permit.Įven stripped to the core, the story possesses a classically tragic arc, and it's not hard to see its appeal to a novelist bent on refleshing bare bones. The period and setting are hardly untrodden territory for novelists and biographers alike, and McLain owes a great debt, as she cheerfully admits, to A Moveable Feast, Hemingway's own posthumously published memoir of his Paris years.
Despite the cobwebs she is, as Ernest quickly spots, "a good clear sort", and so he marries her and whisks her from St Louis to the whirlwind of 1920s Paris, where the likes of Ezra Pound, F Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein can be found thronging every boulevard. Wholesome, a little old-fashioned – "I don't know any jazz, so I'm playing Rachmaninoff" – she's resigned to a spinsterish existence, living unmarried and unemployed in the upper floor of her sister's house.
Hadley Richardson (McLain has elected to keep her characters' real names) is 28 when she first meets the glamorous young war hero at a party.
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