The Paris Wife

It has been a little while since the last update, a busy life is the excuse. So to have a quick recap, the last few reads have been:

March -> April : A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
April -> June : The Betrayal by Helen Dunmore
June -> July : The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
July -> August : The Paris Wife by Paula McLain

I won't attempt to go though them in any detail, although I will say that we took on The Hunger Games with some speculation that it may be a bit of a kids book, and not something we'd normally necessarily be drawn to. However, upon reading it, we all came away giving it good reviews, all 4 or 4.5 out of 5 I believe! Lizzie even went on to read the sequels, all within a month!

This month we read The Paris Wife, which follows the life of the first wife of Ernest Hemingway. It is based on real people and real event, and the Paula does go onto list her many references and research done to give the book an air of authenticity. I feel we all had relatively similar feelings about the book, we didn't necessarily fall in love with the book itself, we were annoyed that the protagonist didn't make more of a stand against Hemingway and instead allowed herself to be walked over, however there was something almost magical reading about these real people, about where Hemingway went, his friends, life in Paris and so on.

Being somewhat of a philistine, I have not read any Hemingway, or in fact the majority of the author friends of Hemingway, but reading The Paris Wife has made me want to give one of his books a shot at some point in the future!

In terms of restaurant, we tried to go to Gorilla (where the Green Rooms used to be) however it was completely packed (no chance of getting a table) so we instead got the last table in the Cornerhouse and had an all round pleasant meal. Hopefully we'll have more luck with Gorilla next month!