Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald in Retro Chapter Chicks

May 02, 2014 Book Concierge rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: france, historical-fiction, mental-illness, italy, new-york, marriage, library, concierge, strong-women, women-writers

Audio book performed by Jenna Lamia

Zelda Sayer was just shy of her eighteenth birthday, a popular debutante in her Montgomery Alabama home, when she met a dashing young Army lieutenant – F Scott Fitzgerald. The rest, as they say, is history. This novel – and it IS a novel – tells the story of the Fitzgeralds from Zelda’s point of view.

Of course I already knew the basic story of the famous couple – their meteoric rise to fame, their frantic partying as they embraced the Jazz Age, their slow desc Audio book performed by Jenna Lamia

Zelda Sayer was just shy of her eighteenth birthday, a popular debutante in her Montgomery Alabama home, when she met a dashing young Army lieutenant – F Scott Fitzgerald. The rest, as they say, is history. This novel – and it IS a novel – tells the story of the Fitzgeralds from Zelda’s point of view.

Of course I already knew the basic story of the famous couple – their meteoric rise to fame, their frantic partying as they embraced the Jazz Age, their slow descent and early deaths. What Fowler has done, however, is take all the biographies, memoirs, letters, news accounts, reviews, and magazine articles and crafted a wonderfully personal story of a fascinating woman and the man she loved. She peppers the novel with real incidents and the large circle of friends and acquaintances who were nearly as famous as (or sometimes more than) the Fitzgeralds. Ernest Hemingway looms large in the story of Scott and Zelda’s years in France and of their marriage, and so he plays a significant role in this novel. But it’s wise to remember that this a work of fiction, told strictly from Zelda’s point of view. Yes, we do get some counterpoint when she is arguing with Scott or some other character, but her opinions, thoughts, reactions are the primary focus here.

Fowler does a good job of painting the landscape of the time and place as well. The Fitzgeralds lived in many locations during their marriage – New York, St Paul MN, Maryland, Paris, the Riviera, Italy, Switzerland, Hollywood. Fowler manages to give us a glimpse of each locale, but not a clear picture – blurred as it was by all the alcohol these two consumed. More importantly, the focus of the novel is on the relationship between Zelda and Scott. They lived in a very tiny world, focused on one another, feeding on each other’s weaknesses or strength as the occasion demanded.

The result is a mesmerizing look at a marriage that is doomed from the outset. Yesterday a large sinkhole opened up taking half a Baltimore street (cars, trees, etc) with it. Every time the video is replayed on television I find I cannot tear my eyes away from the destruction unfolding before me. I already know what is going to happen, but I can’t stop watching it. I felt the same way reading this book.

Jenna Lamia does a fine job narrating the audio version of the book. Her Southern debutante Zelda is spot on perfect. Her older, shrill, frustrated, mentally exhausted Zelda is equally as good. And she does a pretty good job on the male characters as well.
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Apr 25, 2014 Kris (My Novelesque Life) rated it did not like it

DNF

(I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review).

"When beautiful, reckless Southern belle Zelda Sayre meets F. Scott Fitzgerald at a country club dance in 1918, she is seventeen years old and he is a young army lieutenant stationed in Alabama. Before long, the "ungettable"� Zelda has fallen for him despite his unsuitability: Scott isn't wealthy or prominent or even a Southerner, and keeps insisting, absurdly, that his writing will bring him both fortune and fame. Her fathe DNF

(I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review).

"When beautiful, reckless Southern belle Zelda Sayre meets F. Scott Fitzgerald at a country club dance in 1918, she is seventeen years old and he is a young army lieutenant stationed in Alabama. Before long, the "ungettable"� Zelda has fallen for him despite his unsuitability: Scott isn't wealthy or prominent or even a Southerner, and keeps insisting, absurdly, that his writing will bring him both fortune and fame. Her father is deeply unimpressed. But after Scott sells his first novel, This Side of Paradise, to Scribner's, Zelda optimistically boards a train north, to marry him in the vestry of St. Patrick's Cathedral and take the rest as it comes.

What comes, here at the dawn of the Jazz Age, is unimagined attention and success and celebrity that will make Scott and Zelda legends in their own time. Everyone wants to meet the dashing young author of the scandalous novel - and his witty, perhaps even more scandalous wife. Zelda bobs her hair, adopts daring new fashions, and revels in this wild new world. Each place they go becomes a playground: New York City, Long Island, Hollywood, Paris, and the French Riviera - where they join the endless party of the glamorous, sometimes doomed Lost Generation that includes Ernest Hemingway, Sara and Gerald Murphy, and Gertrude Stein.

Everything seems new and possible. Troubles, at first, seem to fade like morning mist. But not even Jay Gatsby's parties go on forever. Who is Zelda, other than the wife of a famous - sometimes infamous - husband? How can she forge her own identity while fighting her demons and Scott's, too? With brilliant insight and imagination, Therese Anne Fowler brings us Zelda's irresistible story as she herself might have told it." (From Amazon)

I have always loved F. Scott Fitzgerald's writing and have been interested in his life with Zelda. Unfortunately, after 50% into the novel I could no longer read it anymore. It did not sound like the Zelda I have read in our novels and books. ...more

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