Page Fifty-Two

The Paris Wife by Paula McLain

Ernest Hemingway had four wives and likely countless mistresses. This novel tells of Ernest's first wife, Hadley, a woman eight years his senior, the woman whom, at the end of his life, Hemmingway wrote that he would rather have died than fallen in love with anyone but her.

This novel confirmed what I had already known or gleaned from other texts about Hemmingway. As Hadley remarks, "He loved and needed praise. He loved and needed to be loved, and even adored" (241). The reason why Hadley and Hemmingway's relationship likely worked six or seven years is because of Hadley's ability to provide Hemmingway with what he needed at the time: praise, encouragement, unending support. In a way, Hadley herself reminded me of what Hemingway was trying to achieve in his writing: strong and simple and true. This is likely what attracted him to her. Yet, it is her need and desire to be Hemmingway's supportive wife that ultimately turned my interest in Hadley to slight disgust. Near the end of the novel when it is apparant that Hemmingway has fallen for Hadley's friend, Pauline, Hadley permits Pauline to openly become Hemmingway's mistress before the arrangment finally breaks down and Hadley agrees to divorce Hemmingway. 1920s Paris is life at its fastest: hard drinking and partying; constant traveling; zany, volatile literary figures and their partners like Pound, Fitzgerald, Stein. Hadley feels at odds with the modern Parisian who sees traditional family life and monogamy as stifling and dated. Yet Hadley, who often remarks at how she does not fit neatly into this Jazz-age Paris like her husband and friends around her, begins to sacrifice too much of herself for a husband who is selfish and obsessed with becoming one of the greatest writers of his time.

In the end, Hemmingway gives in to the darkness that is everpresent in his life and commits suicide in 1961. If we can trust McLain's representation of Hadley it seems as though she never got over her love for Hemmingway, the man who "change[d] her life" (341), even after remarrying and only seeing Hemmingway twice since their divorce.

Page Fifty-One

The Midwife of Venice by Roberta Rich

The novel opens with a description of sixteenth-century Venice that sets the mood for the entire text: "At midnight, the dogs, cats, and rats rule Venice. The Ponte di Ghetto Nuovo, the bridge that leads to the ghetto, trembles under the weight of sacks of rotting vegetables, rancid fat, and vermin. [. . .] It was on such a night that the men came for Hannah." What these men come for is Hannah's help in delivering a baby for a wealthy Christian family. The problem is that Hannah is Jewish, and it is not only illegal for Jews to administer medical treatment to Christians, but Hannah's method she uses as a midwife may cause the Inquisition to deem her a witch. The text follows Hannah's encounter with the Conte and his wife, a sickly and frail woman who has had much difficulty producing an heir for her husband, and intersects her story with the story of her husband, Isaac, who has been captured as a slave on the island of Malta and is in need of ransom to buy his freedom and passage back to Venice.

Rich's storytelling is quite vivid in its description and suspenseful in the many hardships Hannah and Isaac face in their separate journeys to reconnect with one another. I would not say this book is amazing, but it was a satisfying read.

Page Fifty

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

I started this book last summer, thought it humdrum, and tossed it aside. Luckily, I picked it up again this summer and read it straight through. With lines like "I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life," how can you not enjoy this book and marvel at Fitzgerald's use of language. In fact, just as that quote reveals, the book - to me - is a commentary on the oppositions that Nick Carraway's 1920s self-absorbed American society reveals: within/without; enchanted/repelled; East/West. It is interesting to note how the characters illicit no pity for the reader, yet even with that detachment the book carries the reader into a society that is as shallow as its characters. A true testament to Fitzgerald's writing style as - had it not been for this - I would have reshelved the book a second time.

"He smiled understandingly - much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced - or seemed to face - the whole eternal world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favour. It understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey."

Page Forty-Nine

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley

It is 1950s Britain and 11-year old Flavia de Luce is an aspiring chemist who lives at decaying Buckshaw, an English mansion, with her father and two sisters whom she reviles. When she witnesses a dead jack snipe with its beak through a stamp on her doorstep and then a man in her cucumber patch who whispers "Vale" as he takes his dying breath, a precocious Flavia embarks on a mission with her trusted bicycle Gladys to uncover exactly what has happened and how her father may be involved.

Enjoyed this book primarily because of its quick-witted, intelligent protagonist.