Zelda Fitzgerald

The Tragic, Meticulously Researched Biography of the Jazz Age's High Priestess

By: Sally Cline

Narrated by: Coleen Marlo

Zelda Fitzgerald was the mythical American Dream Girl of the Roaring Twenties who became, in the words of her husband, F. Scott Fitzgerald, "the first American flapper." Their romance transformed a symbol of glamour and spectacle of the Jazz Age. When Zelda cracked up, not long after the stock market crash of 1929, Scott remained loyal to her through a nightmare of later breakdowns and final madness.

Sally Cline brings us a trenchantly authentic voice through Zelda's own highly autobiographical writings and hundreds of letters she wrote to friends and family, publishers and others. New medical evidence and interviews with Zelda's last psychiatrist suggest that her "insanity" may have been less a specific clinical condition than the product of the treatment she endured for schizophrenia and her husband's devastating alcoholism. In narrating Zelda's tumultuous life, Cline vividly evokes the circle of Jazz Age friends that included Edmund Wilson, Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, Dorothy Parker, Lillian Hellman, and H. L. Mencken. Her exhaustive research and incisive analysis animate a profoundly moving portrait of Zelda and provide a convincing context to the legacy of her tragedy.

©2002 Sally Cline (P)2014 Audible, Inc.

Graceful loving tribute

I loved this book, it made me cry. The last time I cried was when my beloved golden died.
For many years I researched my own family history to find a connection from my own great grandfather to F. Scott, I never did. The only connection we will ever have is a great love for Zelda

If You Know Nothing About Her, Give This A Try

What was one of the most memorable moments of Zelda Fitzgerald?

Her childhood

Any additional comments?

I knew nothing going into the book, had heard that the Great Gadsby was written about her, but there were so many WTF moments that made you angry, then sad, then happy. good book for travel.

A Perspective Changer

I'm not usually a biography type of person, but I made an exception due to a 20s phase. I am not sorry I did. The narrator is perfect, and the writing doesn't feel stuffy or stiff like a lot of non-fiction. It flows with beauty and makes you feel as though both Zelda and Scott are personal acquaintances. Zelda's life is tumultuous, and has many lessons for all women, especially those who are both impetuous and hopelessly romantic like herself. This book lingers with you after it's done. It's sorrow, luxury, and drama are truly affecting.

Zelda was Scott Fitzgerald’s Shooting Star

This is a terrific story but a bit depressing how Scott treated, and stole (never credited) from Zelda. And how he drank himself to death. But it’s a great character story that includes the personalities of the day including Hemingway, Dorothy Parker, Gertrude Stein and the rest of the Jazz Age. Zelda was born with the crazy seed, Scott fertilized it.

The Beautiful and the Bungled

Meticulously researched though it claims to be, this book is no great literary achievement, appears to need basic editing, and is thoroughly mangled by its narrator to almost comedic proportions. The two earlier biographies, one by Kendall Taylor and the older one by Nancy Milford, have an elegance of style and are literary achievements in their own right. This is more on the level of a young adult work, not too deep and easy to understand. Some judicious cutting would have improved it too. The narrator outdoes herself with her inability to pronounce the word "row,"( meaning argument,), continuously saying "row," as in what one does with a boat. I guess it's the spelling that defeats her. She seems only capable of pronouncing words used in daily speech and to have no discernible reading vocabulary. Together with her staccato, machine-gun delivery, she races without apparent comprehension of the material from one word-massacre to the next, names of persons and places not spared. Any author deserves better than this, even a second-rate one.