Sunday, April 13, 2014

A good read


Just finished Z - A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald.  If you've read The Paris Wife, you will enjoy the way these two novel relate.  In both cases, they are novelizations of wives of famous writers from the early 20's.
 

Years ago I went on campaign to read everything a particular author had written.  I have read a lot of Scott Fitzgerald wrote, but probably not all of it - he wrote many, many short stories for magazines like the Saturday Evening Post, and I'm pretty sure there are some I have missed.  But I have read all the novels - in fact I had a graduate class on him at the U many years ago.  It was fun to be required to re-read some old faves.

I had also read a bio of Zelda Fitzgerald that was quite good - called, fittingly enough, Zelda.  Nancy Milford started it as a master's thesis and it turned into a biography that was considered for the Pulitzer Prize!!  I also had read Beloved Infidel, the story of Fitzgerald's affair with Hollywood columnist Sheilah Graham.

What I have not read is a lot of the fiction that Zelda Fitzgerald wrote - and I hope to right that wrong!!

The story is a compelling one - not just about the expatriates in Paris in the 20's - but more about the terrible things that can happen when a marriage goes wrong.

It's a true American tragedy!

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