I really didn't understand the idea of this being a novel. It felt more like a group of short stories. In the uneditted addition it seemed even more scatterred and more like a study of Hemingways writing than a novel. I was very glad to have read "the paris wife" first to put things in context.

we read this along with The Paris Wife to obtain a full understanding of Heminways life in the 1920's and the life in Paris. Learned a lot but found Hemingway's book a bit plodding and some of our readers did not like it at all. However we did like The Paris Wife.