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Full disclosure: I love about 95% of Stewart O'Nan's works, fiction and non-fiction; I think he is a terrific writer and researcher and I'm always eager to read his latest offering. Further disclosure: I'm "Meh" on F. Scott Fitzgerald; in particular, I think "The Great Gatsby" is supremely over-rated.So how would I like O'Nan's novelization of the last few years of Fitzgerald's life in his new book, "West of Sunset"? Well, I loved it! O'Nan really pulled me right into the late 1930s Hollywood sc...
This book is a novelization of F. Scott Fitzgerald's final years as he struggled to make a living as a screenwriter in Hollywood in the late 1930's in order to pay for his daughter's education and his wife Zelda's prolonged stay in a mental hospital. During this period he also fell in love with Sheila Graham. The depiction of life in Hollywood at this time, particularly the precarious careers of screenwriters, was very interesting. Scott faced many demons, including Zelda's illness and his own a...
I have loved all of the other books by Stewart O'Nan that I have read, so I was extremely excited to get a galley copy of West of Sunset. Sadly, I really didn't care for it at all. The book is a fictional biography of the last three years of F. Scott Fitzgerald's life. His wife Zelda is in a mental institution. He is an extreme alcoholic, and his fortunes have turned. He has moved out to Hollywood to write for the movies, but at this point in his life he has trouble even making that work.I gener...
Shorter reviews coming!!!! Or few sentences… with an honest rating!Excellent written blurb Stewart O’Nan did this story justice …“O’Nan” was the ‘man’ to write this deeply absorbing story —but it’s soooo sad!!!Sad ending too!!!!Old Hollywood it is! … but ‘not’ the ‘happy-go-lucky’ flapper era….Horrible alcohol abuse, ‘coke’ and ‘chocolate’ diet, tuberculosis (as my own dad had before I was born- then died at age 34 - when I was 4, in Oakland, Ca.)….other devastating demons….mental illness,strug...
West of Sunset by Stewart O’Nan is a 2015 Viking publication. Fans of F. Scott Fitzgerald or those who enjoy tales centered around old Hollywood will find this to be an interesting and poignant read.The story is pretty gloomy, as the last years of Fitzgerald’s life in Hollywood is fictionalized. Zelda is in an institution suffering through good and bad days, but mostly unable to cope in the outside world for extended periods of time. Fitzgerald is broke and in desperate need of cash in order to
1.5 Stars and rounding up because I’m feeling generous. I really enjoyed the other book I read by this author (Last Night at the Lobster) but holy crap was this a snoozer! Focusing on the last years of an interesting character in American history’s life where his success had waned and worked a dreary 9-5 and barely even mentioning the Hollywood royalty he was surrounded by was certainly an interesting choice. Unfortunately it did not work at all for me and was a slog to get through 🙁
Gatsby Among the Locusts: Stewart O'Nan's Novel of Fitzgerald in HollywoodA copy of this novel was provided by Viking Adult through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. This novel will be published January 13, 2015. "There are no second acts in American lives," F.Scott Fitzgerald, found among his notes to his last, unfinished novel, The Love of the Last Tycoon. Stewart O'Nan Stewart O'Nan has written a compelling novel of the last years of F. Scott Fitzgerald and hi...
Covering the years 1937-1940, this book takes readers back in time to a lesser known period in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s life – his time in Hollywood as a screen writer. At this point in his life, Fitzgerald’s heyday is behind him. His wife, Zelda, suffering from schizophrenia, is confined to a North Carolina sanitarium. Their teenage daughter, Scottie, resides in an east coast boarding school. We follow his life as he develops a relationship with columnist Sheilah Graham, interacts with various fam...
I love The Great Gatsby. In fact, it is probably my all-time favorite book. I also enjoyed Fitzgerald 's other works so I could not resist the chance to read O'Nan's fictionalized account of Fitzgerald's time in Hollywood as a screenwriter during the last few years of his life . The writing is really very good - I can almost see Fitzgerald at this resort hotel in Ashville and then with Zelda on the excursion to celebrate their anniversary. This is a down and out time in their lives - Zelda in a
"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." -last line from the novel, 'The Great Gatsby' by F. Scott FitzgeraldI have never been a fan of F. Scott Fitzgerald, although I admit that I have read only two of his novels.... 'The Great Gatsby' and 'Tender is the Night'. Perhaps it would be fairer to say that I look at the 1920s (the time period Fitzgerald writes about in some of his novels) with distaste and disgust. Other than the introduction of jazz into the...
3.5 I knew very little of Fitzgerald's personal life outside of his and Zelda's relationship so I have no basis for comparison. O'Nan did a fantastic job portraying Hollywood, all the drinking and parties, of this time period. Also thought he did a great job showing how responsible he felt for Zelda's welfare and his daughter's happiness. His relationship with Sheilah seemed to bring him little joy and much guilt. I think that is what threw me off in this novel, the tone basically stayed the sam...
I wanted to give this book a higher rating out of fondness for Stewart O'Nan who I have thought a wonderful writer since reading the brilliant and pithy Last Night at the Lobster back when it came out. I generally avoid fictionalized biography. If the subjects are well known, it's hard to restructure their lives enough to craft original fiction. If a person's life is interesting to me, most of the time I'd much rather read a well-written biography and I can't say Stewart O'Nan's new novel challe...
I really love this bio , I focuses on the last few years of his life where he is unhealthy , alcoholic who despite his brilliance can't get a job and keep it. His wife was institutionalize ex by this point and it seems his relationship with his daughter was steadily declining. There is not much written that I have seen about this sad point in his life, so I found this to be a fascinating read . Iran honestly it seems like the people from this Time period had crazy drama .... I found this book we...
West Of Sunset is Stewart O’Nan’s terribly sad but absorbing novel about the last few years in the life of writer F. Scott Fitzgerald.This isn’t the glamorous flapper-era Fitzgerald. His jet-setting European days are in the past. He’s no longer the golden boy. He’s in his early 40s now, and broke. (His books, apart from his first, This Side Of Paradise, never sold particularly well.) After years of alcoholism, his body is a wreck. His wife, Zelda, is in a mental institution. His fiesty daughter,...
F. Scott Fitzgerald has been canonized as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. His oeuvre is not that large (for example, compared to rival Ernest Hemingway)--his 44 years on the planet came and went like a flash in the Jazz Age pan, his glamorized life with Zelda mythologized almost more than his solo presence. When I think of Fitzgerald, I think of Gatsby. How not? But O'Nan captures the screenwriting Fitzgerald, the scenarist whose work in Hollywood is largely unnoticed.T...
Sadly, this earnest book reads like a docudrama, and not a convincing one -- and because the subject, F. Scott Fitzgerald, is so well-known, it never reads like a novel either. I've no doubt that O'Nan did copious research, but he would have served readers better by writing a nonfiction book (I've also no doubt that for a novelist of his standing, such a project would have been unthinkable). I wonder if the facts become a hindrance for an imaginative writer--that they must constantly rein themse...
A fictional version of Fitzgerald's last years, spent in Hollywood in the late 1930's, working at the studios trying to make enough money to keep Zelda in the asylum and Scottie in school, his dreams and yearnings, his self-defeating tendencies, his aching responsibility for his mentally ill wife and late life romance with gossip columnist Sheilah Graham... my favorite locales are here, especially the Garden of Allah and the ghostly figure of Alla Nazimova, the owner of the place--what had begun...
I think everyone (except maybe my boyfriend) goes through a period in their lives where they are completely fascinated by F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. At least many of the people I've known. They were a fascinating duo at a fascinating time in American history. O'Nan's story is about the Fitzgeralds, primarily Scott, over the last three years of his life with the occasional flashback. In the late 1930s, Scott is in California working at MGM studios and Zelda is back East confined to a mental h...
First, a big thanks to Gooodreads FirstReads and the publisher for enabling me to be an early readers.When most of us think of F. Scott Fitzgerald, we remember him as a literary legend: the creator of the Great Gatsby, part of the glittering Scott-and-Zelda duo, full of shimmer and promise.In this latest book, Stewart O’Nan introduces us to Fitgerald-as-outsider: “a poor boy from a rich neighborhood, a scholarship kid at boarding school, a Midwestern in the East, an easterner out West.”Daringly,...
though it has been a while, at one point i did know an awful lot about f. scott fitzgerald - or as much as could be known from various biographies. so from the outset, i knew where o'nan's novel was headed. even though that was the case, i still found this an interesting read. i am just a bit bummed that i did not get as immersed in the book as i had hoped - i really thought this was going to be an awesome, escapist read (something i am in desperate need of lately). stewart o'nan has been a glar...