CONTACT INFORMATION
Publicity
Lisa Barnes
212-572-2014
lbarnes@randomhouse.com
Speaking Engagements
Kelle Ruden
212-940-7873
kruden@randomhouse.com
www.rhspeakers.com
Literary Agency
Barer Literary
212-691-3513
www.barerliterary.com
Request an author chat for your book club
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
"McLain has done meticulous research (including reading hundreds of the couple's letters to each other) and transports the reader to a different place and time, painting a compelling portrait of the relationship as seen through Hadley's eyes. This well-written look at the early adult life of a tortured literary genius is fascinating and will keep readers turning the pages to the very end."
—Post & Courier
"Exquisitely evocative ... This absorbing, illuminating book gives us an intimate view of a sympathetic and perceptive woman, the striving writer she married, the glittering and wounding Paris circle they were part of, and the challenges of trying to preserve love and domesticity in the face of rising celebrity and ruthless ambition. Though she draws faithfully from historical resources (including the couple's letters to one another), McLain reinvents the story of Hadley and Ernest's romance with the lucid grace of a practiced poet."
—Seattle Times
"A sweet love story with surprising emotional impact ... McLain recreates the well-trodden territory of the Lost Generation with more skill and effect than anything written in recent years. Her Hadley Richardson lived with her husband as an everywoman who was very much of her time, and very comfortable there. Her pain is visceral yet so delicately written that her perceptions are trusted and her reactions felt deeply. If the real first Mrs. Hemingway was anything like this creation, it is easy to divine how Ernest fell in love."
—Chicago Sun-Times
"An insightful, bittersweet novel ... emotionally authentic and well-rooted in its time."
—Denver Post
"Paula McLain's emotionally revealing story celebrates both an iconic American writer and a woman of great grace and dignity. THE PARIS WIFE deserves every accolade bestowed upon it."
—Mobile Register
"Paula McLain's fictional account of Hemingway's first marriage beautifully captures the sense of despair and faint hope that pervaded the era and their marriage."
—Associated Press
"Women and book groups are going to eat up this novel ... The evocative PARIS WIFE made me return to The Sun Also Rises and Hemingway's own remembrance of Paris in the '20s, A Moveable Feast. I thank McLain for those renewed reading pleasures and for her own insights into a complicated literary figure and the sweet first wife he loved, then let go."
—USA Today
"McLain's novel not only gives Hadley a voice, but one that seems authentic and admirable. There's a quiet dignity to the woman often dismissed as 'the early wife, the Paris wife.' ... [McLain] makes a compelling case that Hadley was a crucial (and long-lasting) influence on Hemingway's writing life: a partner as well as a cheerleader. She also revisits, with remarkable detail, a singular era in history, one that would produce some of the greatest literary works of the 20th century."
—Newsday
"THE PARIS WIFE creates the kind of out-of-body reading experience that dedicated book lovers yearn for, nearly as good as reading Hemingway for the first time—and it doesn't get much better than that."
—Minneapolis Star-Tribune
"If you're looking for a poignant romance that offers both substance and sustenance, I have a book for you. ... Drawing from biographies, love letters, and Hemingway's novels, McLain blends fact and fiction to explore the inner workings of the courtship and marriage of Hemingway and the lovely, reclusive woman who fell passionately in love with him. Told largely in Hadley's voice, this luscious narrative describes two people drawn together by painful early histories, and eager to sample life's richness. ... For those of us who think we already know everything about 'Papa' Hemingway, THE PARIS WIFE gives us the chance to learn more about his youthful character."
—Boston Globe
"Hadley Richardson comes into her own in Paula McLain's stylish new novel."
—New York Times Book Review
"[THE PARIS WIFE] is an imaginative homage to Hadley Richardson Hemingway, whose quiet support helped her young husband become a writer, and it gives readers a chance to see the person Hemingway aspired to be before fame turned him into something else. ... Part of McLain's accomplishment in this origin story is to make us look again at the Paris husband behind the Paris wife; not at the mythical swaggering Papa, but at the young, death-consumed writer who became a poet of death, who invented a new language to bring it to life, and whose brute emotional literary power will not be dismissed."
—Washington Post
"Paula McLain's vivid, clear-voiced novel is a conjecture, an act of imaginary autobiography on the part of the author. Yet her biographical and geographical research is so deep, and her empathy for the real Hadley Richardson so forthright (without being intrusively femme partisan), that the account reads as very real indeed. ... By making the ordinary come to life, McLain has written a beautiful portrait of being in Paris in the glittering 1920s—as a wife and one's own woman."
—Entertainment Weekly (A–)
"Here comes Paula McLain's marvelous new novel THE PARIS WIFE, which explores those absinthe-soaked days through the eyes of Hemingway's first wife, Hadley Richardson."
—Marie Claire
"McLain's vivid account of the couple's love affair and expat adventures—including absinthe-fueled nights with the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald—will leave you feeling sad yet dazzled."
—PARADE
"In THE PARIS WIFE, McLain has taken their love story, partially told by Hemingway himself in A Moveable Feast, and fashioned a novel that's impossible to resist. It's all here, and it all feels real."
—People
"Told in the voice of Ernest Hemingway's first wife, THE PARIS WIFE by Paula McLain is a richly imagined portrait of bohemian 1920s Paris, and of American literature's original bad boy."
—Town & Country
"You don't have to be up on your Hemingway to get lost in this story and the free-wheeling, wine-soaked atmosphere of 1920s Paris."
—Redbook
"In this new novel, which reimagines Richardson and Hemingway's early days as a couple in 1920s Paris, Paula McLain has given the shy, aspiring pianist a rich, likeable persona. ... Hard to put down."
—The Week
EVENTS
Saturday, September 10—STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, CO
Talk & Signing
Literary Sojourn: Steamboat Springs' Festival of Authors
Saturday, October 15—PETOSKEY, MI
Keynote Talk & Signing
Michigan Hemingway Society
The Odawa Hotel
Petoskey, MI
Saturday, October 22—CINCINNATI, OH
Talk & Signing
Books by the Banks
Wednesday, October 26—HUDSON, OH
7:00 pm
Talk & Signing
The Hudson Library and Historical Society (w/ The Learned Owl)
96 Library St.
Hudson, OH 44236
Thursday, October 27—Rocky River, OH
7:00 pm
Talk & Signing
Rocky River Public Library
1600 Hampton Road
Rocky River, Ohio 44116
Thursday, November 10-Sunday, November 13—NEW ORLEANS, LA
Words & Music: A Literary Feast in New Orleans
Hotel Monteleone
214 Royal Street
New Orleans, LA 70130-2201
504/523-3341
Wednesday, November 16—AKRON, OH
12:30 pm Lecture, Q&A, and Signing
Author! Author! series
Our Lady of the Elms
1375 West Exchange St.
Akron, Ohio 44313
Wednesday, January 18-Thursday, January 26—AZ, CA, NM
California Literary Society
Wednesday, February 15-Thursday, February 16—WINTER PARK, FL
Talk & Signing
Winter with the Writers
Rollins College
Bush Auditorium
1000 Holt Avenue
Winter Park, FL 32752
Friday, February 17-Saturday, February 18—AMELIA ISLAND, FL
Keynote Address & Signing
Amelia Island Book Festival
Amelia Island, FL 33035
Thursday, February 23—WEST PALM BEACH, FL
Talk & Signing
MorseLife Foundation Breakfast
Saturday, March 3-Monday, March 5—VERO BEACH, FL and STUART, FL
Talk & Signing
Indian River Literary Society
Tuesday, March 20, 2012—FT. MYERS, FL
55:30 pm
Talk, Q&A & Signing
Literary Society of Northern Trust
Ft. Myers, FL
