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.
This was an interesting, thought provoking book. We did not agree with the main characters
lifestyle. Scott and Zelda lived an
exciting life in many locations, never settling down. We felt they were selfish people, not good
parents, and made poor decisions that eventually affected their health. Scott was very controlling and Zelda was not
able to use her talents. We enjoyed the connection between Scott and Hemingway.
This story brought up many serious topics which generated good discussions. Most
of our group liked this biography.
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