Book Review A Paris Wife, And The Mountains Echoed

I’ve got two books to tell you about this month, one that I really enjoyed and one that I had high hopes for, but found meh.

Let’s start with the best one, The Paris Wife: A Novel, by Paula McLain.

(click to buy on Amazon)

From the Amazon description:

A deeply evocative story of ambition and betrayal, The Paris Wife captures the love affair between two unforgettable people: Ernest Hemingway and his wife Hadley.

Chicago, 1920: Hadley Richardson is a quiet twenty-eight-year-old who has all but given up on love and happiness—until she meets Ernest Hemingway. Following a whirlwind courtship and wedding, the pair set sail for Paris, where they become the golden couple in a lively and volatile group—the fabled “Lost Generation”—that includes Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Though deeply in love, the Hemingways are ill prepared for the hard-drinking, fast-living, and free-loving life of Jazz Age Paris. As Ernest struggles to find the voice that will earn him a place in history and pours himself into the novel that will become The Sun Also Rises, Hadley strives to hold on to her sense of self as her roles as wife, friend, and muse become more challenging. Eventually they find themselves facing the ultimate crisis of their marriage—a deception that will lead to the unraveling of everything they’ve fought so hard for.

This book is written from Hadley’s perspective, and reads like a well-written personal journal. Paula McLain provides so much intimate detail on Hadley’s life as Hemingway’s first wife that it is easy to forget that it is a work of fiction. The characters are credible, both gifted and flawed, and things are always more complicated than they appear on the surface. I spent the summer after I graduated from college reading most of Hemingway’s books, and this fictional account of how some of those stories came into being makes me want to reread at least The Son Also Rises and A Moveable Feast. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I really enjoyed The Kite Runner, so I had high hopes for the latest book from Khaled Hosseini, And The Mountains Echoed, but I was not wowed.

(click to buy on Amazon)

From the Amazon description:

In this tale revolving around not just parents and children but brothers and sisters, cousins and caretakers, Hosseini explores the many ways in which families nurture, wound, betray, honor, and sacrifice for one another; and how often we are surprised by the actions of those closest to us, at the times that matter most. Following its characters and the ramifications of their lives and choices and loves around the globe—from Kabul to Paris to San Francisco to the Greek island of Tinos—the story expands gradually outward, becoming more emotionally complex and powerful with each turning page.

It sounds like a good story, doesn’t it? But it didn’t work for me. Or I didn’t work hard enough for it.

The narration moves from character to character and moves forward and backward in time with each shift. Sometimes a different character has a different take on the same event, which is a great literary device, but left me wondering if I had confused characters or events until I figured out it was just a different perspective. The book left some significant threads at loose ends–or maybe I just didn’t see where they were tied up, or even woven loosely together.

Husseini is a great storyteller, and the individual stories captured my attention and my imagination, and the characters stayed with me, so don’t be discouraged by my review. I just feel like I am missing out on the bigger picture because I couldn’t quite see how all the pieces fit together.

Can you explain And The Mountains Echoed To Me?

What should I read next?