juliacall's review against another edition
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
I’m here for the F. Scott Fitzgerald slander - fiction or not.
julia___reads's review against another edition
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
marrowmackenzie's review against another edition
4.0
A wonderfully charming book that is as devastating and dramatic as it is luscious and romantic.
I have always been a big fan of The Great Gatsby, and had heard that much of FS Fitzgerald's work was stolen from Zelda, and it was in looking up answers to that question that I came across this title. Z is historical fiction, and doesn't attempt to be a beat for beat account of Zelda Fitzgerald's life, and I couldn't really speak to any accuracy. But I didn't really come for the accuracy, I came for the drama and rubber neck pleasure of a story I knew would end in tragedy. Which I'm sure sounds a little morbid put out that way, but I feel like Zelda wouldn't mind much.
Fowler cautiously displays abuse and gaslighting in a way that sinister yet not pornographic to the reader and I appreciate that great care. At times, I wanted to jump through the pages and start yelling at Scott and tear the whole place down! I'm also sure that Fowler had a time trying to figure out how to best portray Zelda's sentiments around homosexuality without polarizing the reader from her and she honestly does a great job. (it also seemed sort of imply that Zelda herself might be a little bisexual which was fun)
My only gripe about this book at all is the one use of the N-word. Which makes sense in the historical and familial context it was used, but was unnecessary and seemed to be only there for a shock value in the beginning of the book and then quickly moved on and forgotten about. It might be petty, but it is the reason this is a 4 star book not a 5.
All in all, I had a great time listening. I needed something a little lighter after a few murder books, and Z is a great escape into the fabulous and scandalous world of the early 1900's. Beautiful locals and famous people. Don't we all wish we were as free as them? But maybe not, considering their ends.
I have always been a big fan of The Great Gatsby, and had heard that much of FS Fitzgerald's work was stolen from Zelda, and it was in looking up answers to that question that I came across this title. Z is historical fiction, and doesn't attempt to be a beat for beat account of Zelda Fitzgerald's life, and I couldn't really speak to any accuracy. But I didn't really come for the accuracy, I came for the drama and rubber neck pleasure of a story I knew would end in tragedy. Which I'm sure sounds a little morbid put out that way, but I feel like Zelda wouldn't mind much.
Fowler cautiously displays abuse and gaslighting in a way that sinister yet not pornographic to the reader and I appreciate that great care. At times, I wanted to jump through the pages and start yelling at Scott and tear the whole place down! I'm also sure that Fowler had a time trying to figure out how to best portray Zelda's sentiments around homosexuality without polarizing the reader from her and she honestly does a great job. (it also seemed sort of imply that Zelda herself might be a little bisexual which was fun)
My only gripe about this book at all is the one use of the N-word. Which makes sense in the historical and familial context it was used, but was unnecessary and seemed to be only there for a shock value in the beginning of the book and then quickly moved on and forgotten about. It might be petty, but it is the reason this is a 4 star book not a 5.
All in all, I had a great time listening. I needed something a little lighter after a few murder books, and Z is a great escape into the fabulous and scandalous world of the early 1900's. Beautiful locals and famous people. Don't we all wish we were as free as them? But maybe not, considering their ends.
bananabreanna's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.75
dcmr's review against another edition
2.0
I really wanted to like this book but instead struggled to finish it. I knew nothing of Zelda when I began this fictionalized history and, now done, I know only this: I don't like Scott Fitzgerald or Ernest Hemingway.
lmirhash's review against another edition
5.0
Loved this book. It was a wonderful read and I highly recommend if you love historical fiction.
ablotial's review against another edition
3.0
This was a really interesting book. Had I been reading a paper version rather than listening to the audiobook edition, this may have gotten 4 stars from me. But the narrator's voice was truly grating on me and she sounded like a child reading it, her accent was inconsistent and often changed mid-sentence, and the volume was really erratic so I kept having to adjust it in order to hear as I was driving down the road. I read [b:The Paris Wife|8683812|The Paris Wife|Paula McLain|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1320545874s/8683812.jpg|13556031] not too long ago and there is some overlap between the two stories -- they certainly present two very different views of [a:Ernest Hemingway|1455|Ernest Hemingway|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1406040005p2/1455.jpg]!
It's also interesting to compare and contrast the lives of the Hemingways and Fitzgeralds that are depicted in the two novels. In some ways the Hemingways seem to be the more "normal", but in other ways the Fitzgeralds do. I suppose no one is really "normal", but given that the two men shared the same career and they lived in the same cities, one might expect more similarity.
As for Zelda herself, she was quite the character! I think I would have enjoyed knowing her as a teenager and a young woman. I completely understand her desire to do EVERYTHING, although people were pushing her to choose one of her interests and become a master of that one thing.
At the beginning of the book, Zelda is being cared for with her disease, and then it jumps back to the past, so you know that the disease and sanatorium are coming. However, 3/4 of the way through the book and Zelda still seems fine -- I mean, she's angry with her husband and upset about his excessive drinking, obsessing over ballet, unsure what she wants to do as a career, trying to get into the feminist movement, etc... but none of this makes her unstable or mentally ill in my book, and most of them I see as justified.
So I was starting to wonder if Scott just put her in a home because she was not being the kind of wife that he wanted, and it was making me detest him.
But then she became obviously ill and it all fell into place, though I felt the book rushed through that part of Zelda's life, I suppose because not as much is known but I think it would have been interesting.
It's also interesting to compare and contrast the lives of the Hemingways and Fitzgeralds that are depicted in the two novels. In some ways the Hemingways seem to be the more "normal", but in other ways the Fitzgeralds do. I suppose no one is really "normal", but given that the two men shared the same career and they lived in the same cities, one might expect more similarity.
As for Zelda herself, she was quite the character! I think I would have enjoyed knowing her as a teenager and a young woman. I completely understand her desire to do EVERYTHING, although people were pushing her to choose one of her interests and become a master of that one thing.
At the beginning of the book, Zelda is being cared for with her disease, and then it jumps back to the past, so you know that the disease and sanatorium are coming. However, 3/4 of the way through the book and Zelda still seems fine -- I mean, she's angry with her husband and upset about his excessive drinking, obsessing over ballet, unsure what she wants to do as a career, trying to get into the feminist movement, etc... but none of this makes her unstable or mentally ill in my book, and most of them I see as justified.
So I was starting to wonder if Scott just put her in a home because she was not being the kind of wife that he wanted, and it was making me detest him.
But then she became obviously ill and it all fell into place, though I felt the book rushed through that part of Zelda's life, I suppose because not as much is known but I think it would have been interesting.
tawnsolo's review against another edition
2.0
This book was boring at times, and mildly interesting at others. The only reason I was able to get through it, was that I had an audio copy and I was able to do other things while I listened to it. In general, hearing main characters whine and fight can be an interestingly fun roller coaster; but in this case it was just annoying and agonizing. This book portrayed Zelda as a spoiled, paranoid girl stuck in a miserable marriage to Fitzgerald, and F Scott a selfish, slimy, hot mess... and none of it was very interesting.
novelesque_life's review against another edition
1.0
DNF
(I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review).
"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? With brilliant insight and imagination, Therese Anne Fowler brings us Zelda's irresistible story as she herself might have told it." (From Amazon)
I have always loved F. Scott Fitzgerald's writing and have been interested in his life with Zelda. Unfortunately, after 50% into the novel I could no longer read it anymore. It did not sound like the Zelda I have read in our novels and books.
(I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review).
"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? With brilliant insight and imagination, Therese Anne Fowler brings us Zelda's irresistible story as she herself might have told it." (From Amazon)
I have always loved F. Scott Fitzgerald's writing and have been interested in his life with Zelda. Unfortunately, after 50% into the novel I could no longer read it anymore. It did not sound like the Zelda I have read in our novels and books.