Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald
Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald is Therese Anne Fowler's 2013 biographical novel, told in the close first person of Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald and built on the surviving letters, diaries, and medical records of Zelda's life. The book opens in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1918, where seventeen-year-old Zelda, the youngest daughter of the local Supreme Court justice, meets a young army lieutenant from St. Paul named F. Scott Fitzgerald at a country-club dance. From there it carries the reader through the manic decade Scott and Zelda spent at the center of American letters: the apartment-hopping Manhattan years of This Side of Paradise, the rented houses on the Riviera, the long Parisian afternoons with the Hemingways and the Murphys, the writing of The Great Gatsby and Tender Is the Night, and the slow accumulation of bad money, drinking, infidelity, and finally the schizophrenia diagnosis that confined Zelda to one institution after another. Fowler grants Zelda a voice American letters has often denied her.
Themes & atmosphere
What you might want to know about Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
On a summer evening at the Montgomery country club in 1918, eighteen-year-old Zelda Sayre dances with a young army lieutenant named Scott Fitzgerald.
Yes. Therese Anne Fowler's novel is a fictionalized first-person account of Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald, drawing on letters, diaries, and biographical research.
Yes. Amazon Studios produced a series called Z: The Beginning of Everything starring Christina Ricci. The first season aired in 2017 before the show was canceled.
Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald was written by Therese Anne Fowler, published in 2013 by St. Martin's Press.
Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald is 384 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald takes most readers 6 to 8 hours to finish.
Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald is a standalone novel by Therese Anne Fowler, not part of a series.
Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.