873 Followers
151 Following
bookwormblurbs

Bookworm Blurbs

I absolutely adore reading - my love for books has had a huge impact on my life! I'm going to grad school to be a children's/YA librarian.

Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald

 

Wow. This book is just so good. It got me hooked right from the beginning. Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald is just such a fascinating character, at least the way that Fowler's written her. She goes through so many changes throughout the novel, and I felt that this was such a powerful portrayal of her relationship with F. Scott Fitzgerald. They go from such a happy, loving couple to a couple who's torn apart by alcohol, fame, betrayal, and old grudges. That being said, I liked the first half of the book much more than the second half, because the second half was just depressing. But it's about real life, so unless the author were to completely disregard history (which would just be awful), it has to be depressing.

This is definitely a one-sided story, but it works, because it's supposed to be about Zelda, so it makes sense that it's all from Zelda's point of view. It describes Scott so harshly that by the end of the book, I actually really hated him, and I don't know that he entirely deserved that (though I admittedly don't know much about either him or Zelda, so maybe he did). But because this is all from Zelda's point of view, it's okay that it's definitely biased. What was really beautiful was that, even though I personally hated Scott, and at times, so did Zelda, even at the end, you could tell that a big part of Zelda still loved him. After reading this, I definitely want to read/re-read all of Scott's major novels (This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and the Damned, and Gatsby), and I want to read Zelda's work, too - and I had no idea that she even wrote. I definitely recommend reading this. It's so worth it.