Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald in Busy as a Bee Books

Oct 15, 2020 Kim Kaso rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2020l-l60, 2020lor5000, coffee-books2020, busyasbees-finished, chunkybooks2020

When I first read The Great Gatsby I was in HS, and was disappointed that the romance between Gatsby and his Daisy ended as it did, and it was just one more book in the Canon of White Mostly Alcoholic Male Writers that cast a pall over my teen-age years. I read A Moveable Feast the summer I started reading all of Hemingway, and read it again while taking an honors seminar in college in Faulkner & Hemingway. I accepted conventional wisdom about Zelda’s being crazy, ruining F. Scott Fitzgerald’s l When I first read The Great Gatsby I was in HS, and was disappointed that the romance between Gatsby and his Daisy ended as it did, and it was just one more book in the Canon of White Mostly Alcoholic Male Writers that cast a pall over my teen-age years. I read A Moveable Feast the summer I started reading all of Hemingway, and read it again while taking an honors seminar in college in Faulkner & Hemingway. I accepted conventional wisdom about Zelda’s being crazy, ruining F. Scott Fitzgerald’s life. In years to follow, I re-read TGG in preparation for teaching it to my classes & discovered it to be a nearly perfect evocation of the American desire for reinvention, our relentless determination to hope, our love of “do-overs” & second acts. It spoke to my early 30s adulthood.

As life continued, and I struggled to find a space for myself in the midst of raising 3 children while serving as an active duty Naval Officer with an active duty spouse who spent months elsewhere, I began to think about the women in the lives of these writers, most of whom were bright, strong women relegated by the cultural mores of the time to supporting roles no matter how talented they were in their own ways. Once they married, their identities were subsumed into the role of Wife. Which brings me to the ineffably sad tale of Zelda who was a Renaissance woman married to a briefly bright burning star in the literary firmament whose alcoholism dragged her and her daughter into the train wreck of his sad decline which he often blamed on her. She ended up being misdiagnosed and tortured with the procedures that passed for mental health treatment in the 30s and 40s, constantly being forbidden to write as her ambition, according to her doctors and husband, was at the root of her illness, her need to “compete” with her husband was “unnatural” and “unwomanly”. Disregard the fact that the stories she wrote and published helped keep their economic life afloat (published either with his name attached to hers or his name alone) in a time when Fitzgerald was drinking to excess daily and could not write. She was a professional-level dancer, an artist, she was a creative and more disciplined writer, but was constantly undermined. Their story is made more tragic by the promise that shone within both of them. Yet the two of them clung to each other through the frantic highs of the 20s to the grim lows of the 30s, while Hemingway picked up and dropped wives and lovers, not to mention friends and colleagues, like fashion trends. His shadow is cast over the Fitzgeralds like a thunder cloud, it should have its own ominous music theme. Someone should write a Jazz Age opera with the three of them, if someone has not already, Hemingway is as dark as Scarpia in Tosca, a force majeure that changes the dynamics at Chez Fitzgerald irrevocably. This story echoes the tragedy of TGG. It has left me with a lingering sadness, yet also very glad that I have read it. It is well written, compelling, empathetic, and fascinating. Very highly recommended. I will be reading more about Zelda in coming months, looking for images of her paintings, reading her stories, thinking about her in the context of her time and ours. She sticks with me after turning the last page, a sweet sadness tempered by a respect for her temerity and determination. “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” ...more

18 likes · Like · see review

Mar 04, 2015 Karli rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: bee-books, 5-star-reads

I loved this book - I find the time period fascinating, and the way the characters and the story unfold is beautifully done.

2 likes · Like · see review

Feb 20, 2015 Carly Svamvour rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I loved this book from beginning to end. Other than to say my dislike for Hemingway and his work has been re-confirmed, and my surprise that Scott Fitzgerald was just as much a cad, I will simply say - Zelda? Rest In Peace.

1 like · Like · see review