Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald
THE INSPIRATION FOR THE TELEVISION DRAMA Z: THE BEGINNING OF EVERYTHING
With brilliant insight and imagination, Therese Anne Fowler's New York Times bestseller Z brings us Zelda's irresistible story as she herself might have told it.
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?
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Community Reviews
“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." +
The last sentence of The Great Gatsby and also the quote on the marker of their shared gravesite, strangely sums up the lives of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. I did not know much about either of their lives before reading this fictional account based on many of their letters to each other. The Fitzgerald's shared an intense, tumultuous relationship plagued by substance abuse and mental health struggles. They also shared a never ending commitment to each other despite their struggles.
Their relationship started just after the first World War, after the Influenza Pandemic of 1918, which both took so many lives and soon after emerged a changed country. The Jazz age followed. A time of prohibition, flappers, music and dance. A time of great excess for some that were considered the elite and the quest for the American Dream. It was during this time F. Scott Fitzgerald became a novelist, penning among other writings, The Great Gatsby. His young wife Zelda, whom this book was inspired, played her part and became the "first American flapper."
This book was hard at times to read but very informative and a great account of the times. It is not a time period I am very familiar with and gave a glimpse into this part of American history. I am also always interested in how people were treated medically years ago. Zelda was likely misdiagnosed and most definitely mistreated during her psychiatric breakdowns. 1 empathized with her character, as I did Scott's. So young when they married, still trying to discover themselves and thrown into this world of partying, drinking and excess that would make anyone unwell.
Always trying to keep up and compete. Always searching for more.
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