I am grateful to the book discussion folks at my public library. Thanks to them I read at least one legitimate adult book almost every month. This title has been on my wish list for some time, and it did not disappoint. The story of Hadley Richardson was in some respects very frustrating to read. I guess because we know how the story ends. But the look into the literary and artistic world of Paris in the early 1920s is impossible to resist. Oh to have been a guest a party that includes Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, and Ernest Hemingway! McClain made me feel so very close.

And Hemingway...I have been teaching is work for as long as I have been teaching (27 years; yikes!). Honestly, I think I have been doing his work a disservice. I have been honest about my frustration about his treatment of women and his overwhelming cynicism. While I have praised his talent and discussed his iceberg theory, I'm not sure I have truly appreciated either. The book is clearly fiction, but McClain talks about her source material in interviews and shares that she has tried to recreate Hemingway's and Richardson's voices as faithfully as she could. So I came away with a much more nuanced view of Hemingway than I had previously. Now I feel like I have some sort of insight into his cynicism. I appreciate even more her insight into the extreme effort Hemingway put into his effortless sentences. I will be rereading and reading for a first time many of his works with a renewed appreciation. (Probably not until summer, though.) So in the end, I will be a better AP lit teacher. Cool.

Hadley's story is rendered in a lovely way - her love for Hemingway, her uncertainty, her dedication to his craft. I would have been a bit annoyed by her if she had been developed by a less careful writer. I want her to be much angrier with Hemingway than she ever actually seems to be. In the end, I was truly relieved that she had a happy ending and a happy life.