It’s a pretty well-known fact Ernest Hemingway was intimately familiar with alcohol. Travel just about anywhere in the world and you’ll find a bar with a sign reading “Hemingway Sat Here.” Some other commonly known facts about the American author include his fame for writing some memorable novels, winning the Nobel Prize in Literature, reputation as a ladies’ man, involvement in an expatriate art movement in Paris during the 1920s and, later in life, committing suicide.

These facts do not tell the true story of the man. Paula McLain gives us a much better glimpse in The Paris Wife: A Novel by focusing on Hemingway’s relationship with his first wife, Hadley Richardson.

Every relationship is full of give and take. The challenge is to achieve a balance where you can succeed as a pair but also retain your own identity. It’s seems so obvious and easy, but in execution, it isn’t always so. When Ernest Hemingway met Hadley Richardson, he needed someone who could support him and have complete faith in his imminent success. In return, she needed to believe in love and her.

Written primarily from the perspective of Richardson, McLain paints a picture of Hemingway that is equal parts virile, insecure, genius and selfish. When Richardson first sees Hemingway, he is holding court at a party, surrounded by admirers both male and female. When he shows interest in Richardson, rather than the other women throwing themselves at Hemingway, she feels special. And, as this book tells it, she needs to enjoy that feeling while it lasts because being married to Ernest Hemingway is no easy task. At the end of the story, readers will be left feeling possibly sympathetic for Hemingway, but to feel admiration towards him would be quite difficult.

Equally interesting as the focus on Hemingway is that of the writers movement in Paris during the 1920s. Throughout The Paris Wife there are appearances by Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound and F. Scott Fitzgerald. McLain handles describing their personality quirks in such a way that it’s impossible not to become more intrigued by the people. Stein’s relationship with her lover is fascinating, Pound’s views on marriage interesting at best and Fitzgerald’s wife a treat to read about.

McLain does a wonderful job at handling the facts of this story in a way that let readers empathize with, and be frustrated by, both characters. It will be hard to finish The Paris Wife and not want to pick up a novel by Hemingway or explore some of his peers’ works. But it will also be hard to ever think about Hemingway the same way.

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