At times, Fowler’s descriptions are overly expository-as if she is too eager to squeeze in biographical detail. Parts of the novel can feel cheesy and contrived. Zelda spends her 30s in “sanitariums” for the mentally disturbed. Scott is blighted by tepid book reviews and a love of the bottle. Yes, there are periods of success and elation-usually celebrated over stiff cocktails with the likes of Coco Chanel, Pablo Picasso, Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemingway (whom Zelda deplores). The rest of the book follows the slow collapse of that marriage. Against the wishes of Zelda’s hidebound parents, Scott and Zelda wed and set off for the jazz-fuelled streets of New York City. Scott, then a dashing young army lieutenant, arrives in Alabama-where he soon falls for a 17-year-old belle with a healthy dose of impishness. Scott Fitzgerald’s place in the 20th-century literary canon. Z-which is based on real events but takes plenty of artistic licence-opens in 1918, seven years before the publication of The Great Gatsby cemented F. “For every biographer or scholar who believes Zelda derailed Scott’s life, is one who believes Scott ruined Zelda’s,” writes the author of this new book on the real-life Fitzgeralds.
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