Jan G. (sunnysouth) - , reviewed on + 14 more book reviews
I listened to "The Paris Wife" on Audio CDs. The narrator had an irritating tone to her voice that I found distracting. She sounded like she should be reading a Stephanie Plum novel rather than this. I will give the narrator good marks for pronouncing to this untrained ear some multi-syllable French words.
I had just listened to "American Wife" by Curtis Sittenfeld which is a loosely realized story following a charachter similar to Laura Bush. Her husband is a lout and blustering person who becomes governor and later president because he has nothing better to do. What he really loves is baseball and being the owner of a baseball team. He and his overbearing family are concerned about his "legacy" and the wife, totally subsummed by her infactuation with him, allows herself to be bullied and undercut and fianlly betrayed by him...although through her own sense of loyalty to her man.
"The Paris Wife", although from a different era, follows a strikingly similar vein. Hadley falls for Hemingway in the same love-struck way that the American Wife does. Hadley and Hemingway are caught up in a group dynamic similar to the overbearing family of American Wife. Hadley and American Wife are bullied, undercut and betrayed all the while denying what is happening to them by men who have no empahty and are driven by their own sense of destiny.
All in all I found the characters in American Wife better written than Paris Wife; I had little sympathy for Hadley and the writing seemed to present her not as a character of her time but as a dupe to Hemingmway's longings. Paris Wife also failed as an historical set piece for which it had good potential. I came away wishing the writer had created a better environment for her characters to work out there post-war sense of loss and renewal.
I had just listened to "American Wife" by Curtis Sittenfeld which is a loosely realized story following a charachter similar to Laura Bush. Her husband is a lout and blustering person who becomes governor and later president because he has nothing better to do. What he really loves is baseball and being the owner of a baseball team. He and his overbearing family are concerned about his "legacy" and the wife, totally subsummed by her infactuation with him, allows herself to be bullied and undercut and fianlly betrayed by him...although through her own sense of loyalty to her man.
"The Paris Wife", although from a different era, follows a strikingly similar vein. Hadley falls for Hemingway in the same love-struck way that the American Wife does. Hadley and Hemingway are caught up in a group dynamic similar to the overbearing family of American Wife. Hadley and American Wife are bullied, undercut and betrayed all the while denying what is happening to them by men who have no empahty and are driven by their own sense of destiny.
All in all I found the characters in American Wife better written than Paris Wife; I had little sympathy for Hadley and the writing seemed to present her not as a character of her time but as a dupe to Hemingmway's longings. Paris Wife also failed as an historical set piece for which it had good potential. I came away wishing the writer had created a better environment for her characters to work out there post-war sense of loss and renewal.
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