"Z, A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald," by Therese Anne Fowler

In the spirit of the newest incarnation of "The Great Gatsby," which I was very eager to see, I decided to get in the mood by reading "Z," which is a novel about Zelda Fitzgerald. First of all, let me say, if you think the movie was over the top, it wasn't... at least if the events in the book are to be believed. From what I was able to gather, young people in the era immediately following WWI were pretty much out of control, and Prohibition only compounded the "problem." In an excellent example of history repeating itself, I was reminded of the late 60s, another time fraught with the horror of war, during which marijuana replaced alcohol and racial equality became the suffrage movement. 

It's not a book I can necessarily recommend to everyone. It was interesting in the vein of the new Jazz Age focus the movie has inspired which, by the way, is a term Scott Fitzgerald coined. And, as a literary and history geek, it was interesting to get a little more insight into the Lost Generation of artistic giants, including Hemingway, T. S. Eliot, Gertrude Stein, Picasso, Isadora Duncan and Ezra Pound. They were all social peers and on-again-off-again comrades in arms... and, basically, created lightning in a bottle. But, it's a chick book, definitely, told completely from the side of Zelda. Even the author admits that, based on interviews with people who knew the couple, Zelda and Scott, while deeply in love, were poison to each other. And, the story doesn't end happily ever after. But, actual history rarely does. 

While it is fiction, it gives a realistic voice to a time when there was a huge generational gap between the expectations of an older "establishment" seeking a balm for the horrors of the Great War by holding onto the security blanket of tradition, and a younger generation returning home from a brush with death, knowing things could never be the same and ready to make sure by setting new rules. In a frenzy to break away from the staid complacency they felt had cost them their youth and innocence, paid for with the blood of their friends and lovers, they countered with new standards of unbridled living. Most everyone was constantly torn between finding his or her own place in the world with one foot still on the steady platform of the past and the other precariously resting on the step of a fast moving train to the future, unaware that the future was actually moving toward them on its own at breakneck speed and, in the short span of only 30 years, would collide with the present, bringing with it global financial collapse and another World War. 

This book provides the most vividly real and intimately personal portrayal of that brief period of time that brought about one of the most significant turning points for societies on both sides of the Atlantic. And, more specifically, it tells a story of an artist in her own right caught up in this tug-of-war by trying to find an outlet in a world in which female ambitions were considered hobbies and whose light was constantly dimmed by the brilliance of the person she loved best. Trying to find one's footing during this time of frenzied change was sure to drive some to seek solace in a bottle or, even, in the dark recesses of madness. No wonder the artists who were trying to record the era for posterity in prose, dance, music and art were called the Lost Generation. It was a marathon for which they were unknowingly pitifully prepared to run.