Topnotch research is presented in this book, enhanced with anecdotes from those who knew people who knew the subjects.

I obtained this book from the library after watching "Tender Is The Night" on TCM. It's a disturbing autobiographical movie that makes one wonder if F. Scott Fitzgerald had a conscience. Robert Osborne mentioned Milford's book as the only one that comprehensively covers Zelda Sayre's creativity, her shattered dreams, and her battle with mental and emotional turmoil.

The creative coupling of F. Scott and Zelda was highly unpredictable. If either partner's dreams are dropped and scattered, only a miracle can piece them back together. They were ill-fated in multiple ways. Both were narcissistic, driven, extremely creative, self-absorbed, and destructive. Individually, they were brilliant, but together, they were doomed.

Milford presents the facts, which I value in a biography. F. Scott was not only an emotional and artistic thief but also a cruel coward, abetted by publishers and certain acquaintances. There are many such stories, like Rodin and Camille Claudel, Rivera and Kahlo. They are like supernovas, burning bright and then fading away. And often, the women end up in institutions.

So, my creative advice to artistic firebrands is: either stay single or marry a nice banker.

This biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald's wife provides a comprehensive account of her entire life. Like Scott, she endured a difficult existence, and they not only complemented each other but also brought out the worst in one another. Their lives were filled with both true love and profound emotional traumas.

From the beginning, her relationship with Scott was intense and passionate. They shared a mutual love for literature and the arts, which initially bound them together. However, as their lives progressed, they faced numerous challenges and hardships.

Scott's alcoholism and financial difficulties took a toll on their marriage, and she often found herself dealing with the consequences. Despite this, she remained by his side, supporting him through his struggles. At the same time, her own insecurities and mental health issues also began to surface, adding to the complexity of their relationship.

Throughout her life, she experienced both joy and sorrow, love and heartbreak. Her story is a testament to the power of love and the strength of the human spirit in the face of adversity.

Gracias por publicar esta completa biografía de Zelda.

Es realmente un trabajo admirable. Sin esta biografía, sería muy difícil para nosotros entender la obra de F Scott Fitzgerald en profundidad.

Zelda fue una figura clave en la vida de Fitzgerald. Su relación con él fue compleja y turbulenta, pero también muy inspiradora.

La biografía nos muestra no solo la vida personal de Zelda, sino también su influencia en la obra literaria de Fitzgerald.

Leer esta biografía nos permite ver la otra cara de la medalla, la cara que muchas veces se oculta detrás de las obras maestras.

Espero que más y más personas lean esta biografía y puedan entender mejor la obra de Fitzgerald y la vida de Zelda.

I truly loathed both of the characters completely by the conclusion of this book.

Zelda was blatantly a spoiled child and was rather unhinged, even prior to her relationship with Fitzgerald. Her parents were largely to blame for raising a young woman who would never conform to society, having been permitted to act scandalously without consequences. It's no surprise she was pursued by numerous young men as she gave all the social indications of being a young lady of loose morals.

After meeting F. Scott Fitzgerald, she clung to him as if her life depended on it, despite the objections of her parents. She would constantly praise him in her letters, profess her undying love, and then taunt him with tales of her exploits with other young men. She did this deliberately, knowing he would rush down south to investigate these exploits rather than just visit her. He should have realized she was baiting him and, as an older man, should have considered the game-playing beneath his notice and sought a more stable romance.

Which brings me to my rant about F. Scott Fitzgerald. In my view, he was just as mentally unstable as Zelda. Like her, he craved constant attention and, if not openly adored, would wallow in alcohol and self-pity. However, in that era, he was able to have Zelda committed to a mental hospital, and it was almost entirely up to him whether she stayed or was released. When a new doctor was assigned to Zelda and had to consult with Fitzgerald, he made many notes stating that he felt F. Scott had a negative impact on Zelda and caused her setbacks. The doctor repeatedly urged F. Scott to stop drinking. The doctors began limiting his visits to her because afterwards she would experience setbacks in her treatment. But he never completely stopped drinking and lost many friends who became afraid of his drunken outbursts. Conversely, he would not allow Zelda to drink at all and monitored her every move. He decided what she could and could not write about. He told her she could no longer dance and should paint instead. He even called the publisher they shared and had the publishing date of Zelda's book postponed until after his own was published. They had written similar fictional books, both largely based on their own lives. He was afraid people would accuse him of stealing her work when, in fact, he was regularly stealing her work, having lifted large portions of his female character's dialogue word for word from Zelda's letters to him.

I skimmed the last two chapters because I simply wanted to be done with it. It rarely takes me this long to finish a book, but since it was on my phone, I would return to it when in waiting rooms or at lunch at work.

3.5 stars, rounding up.

Zelda Fitzgerald was an iconic figure in literary history. She was not only the wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald, the author of The Great Gatsby, but also had many other aspects to her identity. She was named the First American Flapper, an enemy of Hemingway, a ballet-enthusiast, a painter, and a novelist. At the age of 30, she was diagnosed with schizophrenia, and the rest of her short life was spent in and out of hospitals. She continued to write letters to her estranged husband, write, and paint until his death in 1940.

The book Zelda, originally published in 1970, uses a variety of sources such as letters, interviews, books, and diaries to tell the story of Zelda's life. It follows her from her childhood as a rambunctious belle in Montgomery, Alabama, to her return as "that crazy woman" that mothers warned their children about. However, the book somewhat neglects the impact of Zelda's life and art on things other than F. Scott Fitzgerald. The narration seems to end in 1940 when Scott dies, and there is only a limited amount of coverage of Zelda's life after that.

Zelda's art, especially her writing, is also an important aspect of her story. It is known that Scott regularly lifted lines from Zelda in his novels, and her letters and diaries were featured in many of his early works. When Zelda wrote her own largely auto-biographical novel, Save the Last Waltz, while hospitalized in Maryland, the fallout was significant. Scott was furious, seeing her writing about their life together as a form of stealing. This incident reveals the complex and often troubled relationship between the two.

The question of whether Scott Fitzgerald drove Zelda to insanity or if she was always "crazy" is at the heart of the story. While the answer may be impossible to know for sure, it is clear that they had a destructive impact on each other and suffered greatly as a result. They were both the face of the Jazz Age and the victims of the world's short memory, yet they remain undeniably memorable.

This book truly had a profound impact on me, making me completely fall in love with the Fitzgeralds.

It's quite interesting because I believe I actually read this particular work before delving into any of Scott Fitzgerald's novels.

The story within its pages was so captivating and engaging that it instantly drew me into the world of the Fitzgeralds.

It gave me a unique perspective and insight into their lives, their relationships, and their era.

Through the author's vivid descriptions and masterful storytelling, I felt as if I was right there with them, experiencing their joys and sorrows.

This book served as a wonderful introduction to the Fitzgeralds and left me eager to explore more of their works.

It has become one of my favorite reads and has inspired me to further study and appreciate the literary genius of Scott Fitzgerald.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in literature, history, or the lives of fascinating individuals.

It is a must-read that will surely leave a lasting impression.

Quick disclaimer - I read a different cover edition that the internet promises is the same story, just in more pages than this one, but I obviously cannot promise this. If my review seems to be mistaken, let me know.

I will say - for the amount of times "love" is used in this book, the number of times poor choices and mean actions are justified because of "love", and the tag line of this entire book being "the love of the century", there doesn't seem to be a lot of love going on here. Let alone kindness. Scott used Zelda and was a controlling and manipulative little freak while Zelda clearly has an attachment disorder of some kind.

Let's just say: if this book is portraying true love, I think I'm okay going without.

When researching to try to figure the above out, I discovered that this book started as a masters thesis, and I just have to say - some chunks of it read exactly like that. This isn't necessarily anything against thesis', but merely to point out that a (large) portion of this book is very academic, to the point that it becomes vaguely mind-numbing.

At many points, we just pretty much read step-by-step summarizing of a short story or a novel, with in-text citations (very reminiscent of essays you write in college - which isn't necessarily a style I want to read in my free time).

We also get to read lengthy letter exchanges (which can be 'meh' to 'maddeningly insane' depending on your grip of Time-Period English) which could have easily just been succinctly explained in a sentence with a footnote to a 'Sources' page in the back or something. This really just makes the book a slog, especially because some places just seem utter inundated with quotes and excerpts. Maybe one here and there, but the extent (and length) feels like a sandtrap on the golf course of a narrative.

This book drags on and on and on. Chapters (in my cover edition) that lasted like, 40 or so pages, and felt like pointless rambles that really just ended to end, rather than in a succinct (narrative) place - yeah, this was DEFINATELY a masters thesis. (Again, nothing particularly wrong with that, just not what I love in my free time, as I spend the rest of my life like this - this could also make the book very challenging to people who's hobbies/expertise doesn't involve literary criticism and historical reconstruction/understanding)

And one small thought not related to this book but just based off of what I learned while reading it - the fact that almost all (of not most of) their stories are autobiographical and many of them share the exact same ideas over and over and over again (towards the end of this book I felt myself rolling my eyes as the author summarized and explained what amounts to the same plot like, five separate times). Sometimes I wonder why we've judged certain figures like the Fitzgeralds as the high point of literature. Nearly none of their ideas were original or invented in any way.

I don't even know where to start expressing my dissatisfaction.

First of all, let's talk about the editing of Bamba. It is full of errors: misspelled words, incorrect punctuation, uppercase letters where they don't belong, and quotation marks that signal the beginning of a literal text but never reappear to indicate the end of the quote. I estimate there is one error for every 30 pages, which is quite a lot. It gives me a feeling of little care in the editing.

Secondly, I consider the synopsis an absolute spoiler. I approached this book because Fitzgerald wrote my favorite book. I consider him a figure of my interest and I trusted that by getting close to his wife (surely a very interesting person), I would also get to know him. That is to say, I had no idea who Zelda was and in the synopsis I find out about her mental health problems and how she dies (!!!!). I read the synopsis when I was on page 200 and I got really angry. To give you an idea, at that point in the reading she hadn't even fallen ill yet.

Thirdly, the author and her very cold way of telling everything. When I read biographies, which I do often, I always manage to fully immerse myself in the era of the person. The context enriches the behavior and way of thinking of the characters. This didn't happen here and it's a pity because they lived in the 1920s. More than living them, they WERE the 1920s. I trusted to learn more about how society was, the parties, to feel the colors, the hustle and bustle and see champagne everywhere etc. We were in New York, in Paris, on the French Riviera (!!). Well, not a single vibration of the Jazz Age reached me. And I consider the author to be quite distant from everything and she didn't manage to involve me at all.

The general feeling I have is that rather than a biography, Nancy Milford has dedicated herself to joining letters, giving them a context and that's it. I would say that more than half of the book are literal transcriptions of letters and it only managed to make me lose a lot of interest, even from the beginning. I don't want to read the letters, I would buy a book that gathered them if that were the case. I want the biographer to tell me the things and involve me, something that never happened. What a pity.

Besides, I have to add that on the occasions when the author fully analyzes Zelda's books, it is especially hard to continue reading. I was BORED. I understand that she analyzes them because they were works with a very important autobiographical weight but when you have 20 pages and you see that you have 10 more to go, it gets quite tiring. At those moments I didn't know what I was already reading, but it seemed like a thesis on Zelda's work and no, I didn't come to this book for that.

Though I've always held a certain aversion to Scott Fitzgerald's work and harbored a dim perception that Zelda was likely a brat, my curiosity about her was piqued enough to pick up this book at a library book sale. There it sat on my shelf for years, until, during my personal "read all the books on my shelves" challenge, it finally had its moment. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that this is a truly good book. It is enjoyable to read, with a well-paced narrative, vivid descriptions, and thorough research. I came to realize that while Zelda was indeed a brat, she was also a creative and tragic figure. I would even venture to say that she had more potential as a writer than her husband. (A case in point being that he blatantly stole beautiful, evocative sentences directly from her diaries and letters and incorporated them into his books as his own work. For instance, in The Great Gatsby, when Daisy remarks that she hopes her daughter will be a "beautiful little fool," that is precisely what Zelda had said after the birth of her daughter, Scottie.) Consider these lovely images from a letter Zelda wrote to Scott: "Anyway, I love you most and you 'phoned me just because you phoned me tonight-- I walked on those telephone wires for two hours after holding your love like a parasol to balance me." In a tongue-in-cheek review of one of his books, Zelda quipped that "Mr. Fitzgerald... seems to believe that plagiarism starts at home." Indeed, when she attempted to write, Scott flew into petty rages, insisting that she was not permitted to use their lives and her words because he was the writer in the family and he was going to use them.

Side-bar: Now I not only dislike Scott Fitzgerald's work but also his character. What a petty, vain, and pompous chump he was.

Zelda's letters to her daughter were my absolute favorite. They were funny and clever, reminiscent of the things Shirley Jackson might pen. And this was the most tragic aspect for me--if Zelda had not bought into the notion that her entire purpose was to embody "the first flapper," avoid being boring, and please Scott, she might have accomplished great things with her life. In her failed novel, Save Me the Waltz, she wrote, "You took what you wanted from life, if you could get it, and you did without the rest." It's a great pity that "the rest" was what she truly needed but could never obtain, and its absence ultimately drove her to madness.

This biography, based on extensive research into the history of Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald, presents their complex and intense relationship through letters, friends' recollections, and scrapbook musings. It is truly devastating. They may have been the golden couple of the jazz age, but their lives were far from glamorous. We follow their journey through numerous letters and tumultuous relationships, as they experience the highs and lows of wealth and debt, vitality and crippling health issues, happiness and despair. Both Zelda and Scott met tragic ends, despairing of the dreams they held dear in their youth. Their identities were intertwined, for better or for worse. Zelda is often reflected in the female characters of Fitzgerald's novels, with him even borrowing whole passages from her letters and using them cruelly in his works.

Since this isn't a novel, I can't rate it based on how compelled I was to turn the page. Nevertheless, it offers a sad lesson in marriage and how one decision can shape the rest of your life. I wonder if Zelda would have found happiness and stability if she had married someone else. One thing is certain: Scott would not have achieved the success he did without Zelda, as she was central to his novels The Great Gatsby and Tender is the Night.

“It is sadder to find the past again and find it inadequate to the present than it is to have it elude you and remain forever a harmonious conception of memory.”

Engrossing, captivating, and revealing!

This portrait of Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald's life together is truly riveting. It's a love story of two co-dependents who can't seem to stop loving each other, even when they are at odds.

It's also a story of an all-consumed literary genius who extracts so much from his wife's life, as recorded in her journals, to create his novels. He steals from her experiences to craft his characters, while also weaving in his own often dysfunctional perceptions of intimate relationships.

The story is one of excesses, a vivid portrait of celebrity success in the glamorous 1920s and '30s in NYC and its surroundings. Drinking is excessive everywhere. They constantly move along the east coast and the South, with major trips to Europe. They are restless souls, always seeking a calm that eludes them.

Zelda is unstable, perhaps even schizophrenic, and for years she is under the care of psychiatrists with various approaches to her treatment and relationships with her and Scott.

Despite not having the same talent or literary background as her husband, Zelda is an artist in her own right. She writes, paints, and dances ballet, often in an attempt to compete with Scott for recognition of her own value and place in their complex lives.

At every turn, this biography captures the struggles - emotional, intellectual, physical, relational, and mental. It's a book filled with fleeting ups and grueling downs. In all, it is a love story of the most heart-wrenching kind.

Voy a intentar escribir una reseña de este libro en el blog. Así que sólo diré por el momento que me ha gustado mucho. Y lo recomiendo sólo a aquellos que sean 'fitzgeraldadictos'. Porque de otra manera puede resultar un libro denso.

Es tremendamente detallista. Y he aprendido con él un montón de curiosidades sobre este matrimonio. La primera parte del libro, que nos narra la infancia de Zelda, me ha encantado. Ver que era como la imaginaba, una niña inquieta y prácticamente asalvajada. Tal vez tenga que dar a Scott la razón en una sola cosa, que era el ojito derecho de su madre y la tenía muy consentida.

Una lectura que me ha roto en muchos sentidos. La vida de los Fitzgerald no era dorada. O al menos sólo lo fue durante los primeros años. Dos vidas marcadas por la enfermedad, el ansia de éxito y de reconocimiento. El éxito se cobró su precio y fue bastante alto. Siento que la historia de los Fitzgerald terminara de manera tan trágica y pasaran por tantos infortunios.