Hemingway: The Paris Years Audiobook By Michael Reynolds cover art

Hemingway: The Paris Years

 Preview
LIMITED TIME OFFER

3 months free
Try for $0.00
Offer ends July 31, 2025 at 11:59PM PT.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 3 months. Cancel anytime.

Hemingway: The Paris Years

By: Michael Reynolds
Narrated by: Allen O'Reilly
Try for $0.00

$0.00/mo. after 3 months. Offer ends July 31, 2025 at 11:59PM PT. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $24.95

Buy for $24.95

Confirm purchase
Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use, License, and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.
Cancel

The 1920s in Paris are the pivotal years in Hemingway's apprenticeship as a writer, whether sitting in cafés or at the feet of Gertrude Stein.

These are the heady times of the Nick Adams short stories, Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, and the writing of The Sun Also Rises. These are also the years of Hemingway's first marriage to Hadley Richardson, the birth of his first son, and his discovery of the bullfights at Pamplona.

©1989 Michael Reynolds (P)2013 Audible, Inc. Art & Literature Authors Historical
All stars
Most relevant  

How did the narrator detract from the book?

The narrator reads so fast that sometimes it seems he's about to lose his breath... which is very distracting from the the story.

Too fast!!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I enjoyed this book, it really filled in his Paris years with multiple sources for different periods and events.

good for Hemingway fans wanting more detail

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The main problem is the way the narrator rushed through the reading, and his mangling of many words both in French and English. For example, he pronounces "quay" three different ways, none of them correct. There is also an editing fault, with a brief repetition of a passage.

However, as a biography, it is not bad. Hemingway comes across as a fairly unlikeable person, both egotistic and insecure at the same time, a bit of a poseur and fraud. This may be because he had difficulty separating himself from what he wrote, so that his characters and he became confused. One does get a vivid picture of the expat society in Paris during these years, and a picture of Hemingway's wife along with an analysis of how he approached his craft, how he learned to write over a period of 7 years, culminating in "The Sun Also Rises"

Decent Book Marred By Bad Narration

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

What did you like best about Hemingway: The Paris Years? What did you like least?

Actually very good information and lots of interest for the diehard Hemmingway fan. Author seems to have a good working knowledge of Hem's life and times.

How did the narrator detract from the book?

This guy thinks he has a fire to put out. He is actually breathless trying to race through - too sad. Repeating "kway" for quay didn't endear him much to me either.

Slow down narrator, slow down.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.