A Moveable Feast

Self-absorbed writing, I liked A Paris Wife so much better.

I loved, loved, loved this book! I hadn't read Hemingway since high school and, frankly, didn't like him that much. What a wonderful portrait he paints of being young in Paris in the 1920's. And the people he knows are all people you're familiar with (and he pulls no punches about what he thinks of them). To me what is most moving is his portrait of his first wife, Hadley. He clearly regrets how he treated her and this beautiful book is his apology to her. I think the narrator does a great job. It's a great read!

This was my first real foray into Hemingway's work, and I loved it. It's a fascinating look not only into a period of Hemingway's private life, but also into the personalities who were at the forefront of the famed "Lost Generation" of modern literature. As Hemingway gets to know writers like Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound and Scott Fitzgerald, he talks about them so intimately that you really feel as though you're getting to know them, too. You also get quite an intimate portrait of the young Hemingway as seen by the older Hemingway, for whom the innocence he still had at that time seems to be a bittersweet memory. Although I find James Naughton's narration kind of flat, it actually works pretty well for an author like Hemingway, whose language is so plain and straightforward. A great audiobook!