Z: a novel of Zelda Fitzgerald (audiobook)

 genre: historical fiction

Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald, a pampered southern belle from Alabama, knows that she wants her life to MEAN something.  So when she meets a young yankee soldier who is determined to become a writer, she sees. him as her ticket out into the real world.  And he's her ticket all right - just not to where she thought she was going. Because as the wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald, you are on the cusp - on the cusp of life, of excitement, of a movement - you ARE  the Jazz Age and all it's flapper extravagance.  But there is a price for all the glitz and glamor and while the parties with the A List of society and the privilege of celebrity fill a hole inside Zelda, it's not enough to give actual peace and happiness.  That needs to come from somewhere else - and it's oh so hard for Zelda for find.

I know this is a novel and that I need to take things with a grain of salt in terms of truth and fiction, but this book was a great starting off point for making me interested in both Zelda, Scott, and this particularly raucous period of time.  Her mental illness, her destructive marriage, the many relationships with friends that cause so much drama - it plays out in a way that makes Zelda both the hero and the villian in her own story.  She's complicated, that's for sure, and I find myself interested enough in her and the world she lived in to maybe even read a real biography - she was alive and trying to thrive at such a crossroads in history, a woman who wants so much but finds that the fact that she's a woman is an actual, tangible hinderance.  It's hard to see, how she had to be shoved into a box over and over because of her gender.   It's not a particularly happy story, watching people self-destruct, but somehow it doesn't feel necessarily dark or heavy - just realistic in a sad sort of way.

The writing is solid.  A little formulaic maybe, not amazing, but it really moved along and kept my attention.  I can't really compare the Zelda of this book to the "real" Zelda, but again, I knew I was reading fiction so I just let myself enjoy being seeped into a world of artists and wordsmiths who saw themselves at the top of the world.  

I really enjoyed the audio performance.