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In 1921 F. Scott Fitzgerald was twenty-five and heralded as the most promising writer of his generation, owing to the success of his first novel This Side of Paradise. Recently married to the girl of his dreams, the former Zelda Sayre, Fitzgerald built upon his sudden prosperity with The Beautiful and the Damned, a cautionary tale of reckless ambition and squandered talent set amid the glitter of Jazz Age New York.
The novel chronicles the relationship of Anthony Patch, a Harvard-educated, aspiring writer, and his beautiful young wife, Gloria. While they wait for Anthony’s grandfather to die and pass his millions on to them, the young couple enjoys an endless string of parties, traveling, and extravagance. Beginning with the pop and fizz of life itself, The Beautiful and the Damned quickly evolves into a scathing chronicle of a dying marriage and a hedonistic society in which beauty is all too fleeting.
A fierce parable about the illusory quality of dreams, the intractable nature of reality, and the ruin wrought by time, The Beautiful and the Damned eerily anticipates the dissipation and decline that would come to the Fitzgeralds themselves before the decade had run its course.
Pagan Harleman studied literature at Columbia College, then traveled extensively in the Middle East and West Africa before receiving an MFA from New York University’s graduate film program. While at NYU she made several award-winning shorts and received the Dean’s Fellowship, the Steven Tisch Fellowship, and a Director’s Craft Award.
Fitzgerald's work was chiefly driven by the disintegration of America following World War I. He believed the country to be sinking into a cynical, Godless, depraved morass. He was never reluctant to voice criticism of America's growing legions of idle rich. Recreating a heated confrontation with Ernest Hemingway in a short story called "The Rich Boy," Fitzgerald wrote, "Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different."
The preceding quote may sum Fitzgerald's philosophy more completely than any other, yet he also hypocritically embodied much of what he claimed to loathe. Fitzgerald spent money freely, threw lavish parties, drank beyond excess, and globe-trotted with his glamorous but deeply troubled wife Zelda. Still, in novel after novel, he sought to expose the great chasm that divided the haves from the have-nots and the hollowness of wealth. In This Side of Paradise (1920) he cynically follows opulent, handsome Amory Blaine as he bounces aimlessly from Princeton to the military to an uncertain, meaningless future. In The Beautiful and the Damned (1922) Fitzgerald paints a withering portrait of a seemingly idyllic marriage between a pair of socialites that crumbles in the face of Adam Patch's empty pursuit of profit and the fading beauty of his vane wife Gloria.
The richest example of Fitzgerald's disdain for the upper class arrived three years later. The Great Gatsby is an undoubted American classic, recounting naïve Nick Carraway's involvement with a coterie of affluent Long Islanders, and his ultimate rejection of them when their casual decadence leads only to internal back-stabbing and murder. Nick is fascinated by the mysterious Jay Gatsby, who had made the fatal mistake of stepping outside of his lower class status to pursue the lovely but self-centered Daisy Buchanan.
In The Great Gatsby, all elements of Fitzgerald's skills coalesced to create a narrative that is both highly readable and subtly complex. His prose is imbued with elegant lyricism and hard-hitting realism. "It is humor, irony, ribaldry, pathos and loveliness," Edwin C. Clark wrote of the book in the New York Times upon its 1925 publication. "A curious book, a mystical, glamorous story of today. It takes a deeper cut at life than hitherto has been essayed by Mr. Fitzgerald."
Gatsby is widely considered to be Fitzgerald's masterpiece and among the very greatest of all American literature. It is the ultimate summation of his contempt for the Jazz-Age with which he is so closely associated. Gatsby is also one of the clearest and saddest reflections of his own destructive relationship with Zelda, which would so greatly influence the mass of his work.
Fitzgerald only managed to complete one more novel -- Tender is the Night -- before his untimely death in 1940. An unfinished expose of the Hollywood studio system titled The Love of the Last Tycoon would be published a year later. Still The Great Gatsby remains his quintessential novel. It has been a fixture of essential reading lists for decades and continues to remain an influential work begging to be revisited. It has been produced for the big screen three times and was the subject of a movie for television starring Toby Stephens, Mira Sorvino, and Paul Rudd as recently as 2000. Never a mere product of a bygone age, F. Scott Fitzgerald's greatest work continues to evade time.
He held a very romantic view of Princeton before attending the university in 1913. However, his failure to maintain adequate grades or become the football star he dreamed to be lead to an early end to his studies in 1917.
Fitzgerald owes a his name to another famous American writer. He was named after Francis Scott Key, the composer of "The Star Spangled Banner," who also happened to be a distant relative of Fitzgerald's.
From Pagan Harleman’s Introduction to The Beautiful and Damned
F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote The Beautiful and Damned, his second book, when he was only twenty-five. It was published in 1922, just as the Jazz Age was beginning to hit its stride. The war was over, the economy was booming, the skyscrapers were rising, the flappers were vamping, the alcohol was flowing (despite Prohibition), the music was swinging, and the party appeared to be never-ending. America was, as Fitzgerald later said, "going on the greatest, gaudiest spree in history and there was going to be plenty to tell about it” (The Crack-Up, with Other Pieces and Stories, p. 59; see "For Further Reading”). Who better to chronicle the splendor of this new age than Fitzgerald, the man who since the rip-roaring success of his first novel had been called its most notorious voice?
Although he was the poster boy for this extravagant age, with his second book Fitzgerald chose to focus not on the splendor of the era, but instead on its spoils, the ugly aftermath of the party. The Beautiful and Damned is a cautionary tale of a young, insouciant, and irresponsible couple, Anthony and Gloria Patch, and their inevitable downward spiral. In the beginning, they are carefree and happy, buoyed by their love for each other and the hope that Anthony will one day inherit his grandfather’s vast fortune. By the end, they have deteriorated to such an extent that both appear to be bitter, empty shells of their former selves. Gloria has lost her beauty and with it her confidence, and Anthony has metamorphosed into a dissolute drunk who behaves like a child. Theirs is a bleak story without any real promise of redemption.
The Beautiful and Damned is Fitzgerald’s least-known novel, yet it provides fascinating insight into his development as a writer and his evolution as a person. Stylistically, it functions as the intermediate step between the unfocused but exuberant vitality of his debut novel, This Side of Paradise, and the superb craftsmanship of his third and in many ways greatest book, The Great Gatsby. While This Side of Paradise is a discursive story with digressions aplenty and The Great Gatsby is a seamless, nearly flawless narrative, The Beautiful and Damned is somewhere in between: a fully fashioned and controlled story that nevertheless often belabors its points and exhausts its themes. Despite its defects, the book is a compelling story that allowed Fitzgerald to explore fundamental questions and themes he developed throughout his fiction: What is the purpose and the cost of maintaining dreams? What motivates failure? What causes people to fall in and out of love? And what makes a character tragic? Tragedy, of course, was a running theme in Fitzgerald’s psyche and his life.
When Fitzgerald began to write The Beautiful and Damned, his life was anything but tragic. His first novel had just been published to wide critical and popular acclaim, selling more than 75,000 copies. He was universally hailed as literary wunderkind and had become one of the highest-paid short story writers in the business. He had finally won the hand of his sweetheart, Zelda, and together they were living the high life in New York, feted everywhere as the glamour couple. At the age of twenty-four, Fitzgerald had achieved all his dreams, and the future looked infinitely bright and promising. Yet within fourteen years he would hit rock bottom and become an alcoholic living in a cheap motel, eating twenty-five-cent meals and washing his own clothes in the sink while his wife was treated for schizophrenia in a nearby sanatorium. By then, unable to write and owing tens of thousands of dollars, overwhelmed by his dire situation, Fitzgerald would crack, suffer a nervous breakdown, and, like his character Anthony Patch, become a broken man.
While there is no simple explanation of how Fitzgerald’s downfall came about, there is no question that by writing The Beautiful and Damned he was expressing his fears of dissipation and, to a certain extent, prophetically anticipating and foreshadowing his own decline. Although he created several memorable heroes, in many ways Fitzgerald was his own greatest tragic figure. In keeping with the credo of his Romantic idols, like John Keats, he lived life at full speed, flinging himself into every experience with frightening energy to enlarge his powers as an artist. He married a woman who zealously asserted her own will and her thirst for life without fear, inhibition, or, at times, regard for him. Fitzgerald always had the capacity to recognize the risks inherent in his own behavior, to acknowledge that he was self-destructive, but he lacked the desire, strength, or ability to change. His resistance to change was perhaps a result of his artistic commitment. Fitzgerald’s first and foremost priority was to experience life, then to write about it. Everything else, even self-preservation, came second. While his lack of caution may in retrospect appear irresponsible, even indeed tragic, he did produce magnificent writing.
Fitzgerald is a very talented writer whose works are obviously renowned for many reasons, however his descriptive writing style and ever-present symbolism honestly makes this book better for philosophical reading groups and literature courses rather than for the average person looking for a good read. Someone with a degree in English would definitely be able to appreciate this book. Overall, great symbolism and noteworthy writing style, however there's a definite lack of excitement in the story. Perhaps I shall try reading this again in a few months as some books are better and more meaningful after a second read
5 out of 5 people found this review helpful.
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Posted June 29, 2010
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Fitzgerald, oh, Fitzgerald... this novel is why I fell in love with thee in the first place. The characters in Beautiful and Damned are aesthetically pleasant, yet inwardly grotesque; however, despite their inner sickness one can't help but love and root for them. The way Fitzgerald makes his characters out is truly fantastic. I bet he could probably make the most disgusting character likable, and this is where Fitzgerald's strength lies. He's a wonderfully gifted writer and his essence is shown in this novel beautifully. Drama fills this story, as most of Fitzgerald's stories do, and the romance within is depressing, yet entertaining. I love this book and recommend it to anyone who loves Fitzgerald.
4 out of 4 people found this review helpful.
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Posted March 30, 2009
At first I was really interested in this story I really liked the characters but I was really disappointed when half way through it I started to get board. Though the story was good at first it never quite picked up.
Although it is a classic I just did not care for it much.
4 out of 6 people found this review helpful.
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Posted April 14, 2010
Fitgerald can rip your guts out. The protagonists are not hateful,;their values though are.They are beautiful and they will decay themseves in indolence,irrelevance,privilege and selfishness, booze simply comes along for the ride,greasing the skids into decline and damnation of the spirit and the body and in Anthony's case,a seriously beautiful mind.
I kept wanting to open a window,blow in clean fresh live air and light,life and some kind ofcleansing anger.This book is written y a amaster,it hurts,it is hard,and in it's way,it is beautiful,even if it hurts.
2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.This is Fitzgerald's best book. Best characters, best story, best writing. It is underrated, maligned and misunderstood. Romance has a dark side, and this it. Love is destructive. The question Fitzgerald ponders in this great work is whether love is destructive in and of itself, or is the love destructive because of the times (roaring 20s and the Great Depression). Hard to say. He argues both sides, that's for sure. More so than any other work of literature, The Beautiful and Damned comes closest to my own personal experience of Romance, then and now. I love Gatsby-which has jewel-like construction and has earned its place as masterpiece, but I want to provoke. B&D may be second, but second place tries harder! I love Fitzgerald's writing, but this novel has been either overlooked or maligned that I feel I must state a stronger opinion in favor of it. Then it has this great line-after Gloria and Anthony get a new car-about how the same discussions were, who should drive, and how fast should Gloria go. What man hasn't been in that situation? Also, the idea that each generation has its own definition of beauty is one that is inescapable, and not without consequence. Please Visit: timothyherrick.blogspot.com/
2 out of 3 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.The reviewer, "Lost", made a point which opinionates the academic opinion as well. Critically, this book is one of Fitzgerald's shortcomings. Academically, Gloria is underdeveloped as a charachter, but I disagree with that opinion.
There are` some very serious philosophical musings in the book's beginning but he does slogh off a bit towards the end. The introduction of Gloria in paragraph format is so eloquent and promising that one might expound an entire novel from that theme where Fitzgerald left off. It may be that the author's own self effacement got in the way of objectively writing the book because he spent the entire book belittleing himslef and his way of life. A noble effort indeed.
The title says it all. This is a lament. Beauty, Wealth, and Pedegriee being the source of Damnation in and of themslves alone... the stuff of ages.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted June 4, 2006
I am a fan of Fitzgerald, but this is my favorite. I probably read this book four times already. The characters are so rich and complex, heartbreaking and funny all at once. I don't know how he does it!
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted October 14, 2004
The Beautiful and Damned us the story of Anthony Patch and Gloria Gilbert. It takes place in the New York area in the 1920's. Gloria is very vain and has many men. Anthony and Gloria go on a date and Anthony falls in love with her. After several months they get married. Neither one works and they live off of Anthony's inheritance from his father, which isn't very much. They are very involved in the social scene, and go out most nights of the week. Their money slowly dwindles away but they are counting on inheriting millions from Anthony's grandfather. This was a very good book. You forget that it is set about eighty years ago. The book also gets you very involved. You are constantly yelling at Anthony to get a job and at Gloria to get over herself. I would recommend this book to anyone.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted August 3, 2003
This book is remarkable in detail and characterization. I love the drama in this book and, at times, Fitzgerald almost makes it poetic. He not only writes a wonderful, fascinating and tragic story, but also incorporates interesting views of life and history. It's a magnificent illustration of the early 1920's era. Anthony and Gloria Patch are intriguing characters whose selfish ambitions and faults weaves intense emotions throughout the book. Even at times when their lives are despicable or depressing, you love them anyway.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted April 14, 2003
Fantastic use of metaphor and simile, and filled with the numerous examples of Fitzgerald's often stunning lyricism. It doesnt quite reach the all-time peaks as Gatsby; and it DOES suffer from a bit of the same undergraduate's self-consciousness that dogged This Side of Paradise throughout. But its still a delightful book, and F Scott Fitzgerald's 2nd best book--is still several miles ahead of almost anyone else. The scene where Anthony (Scott) is selling Bonds en masse to a captured audience in a drug store, is also one of the funniest things I've ever read!
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted May 15, 2003
Fitzgerald can work a pen like no other writer in history. He's is notoriously uncredited for his innovation skills, in Beautiful and Damned, you'll see why. Many people don't understand the genius of Fitzgerald and label him as an untalented and dry writer who just got lucky with Gatsby. If you are one of these people, read his book and you will change your mind. If you like his, I strongly suggest you to read Fitzgerald's best work, and the best American novel in my mind: Tender is the Night. They both deal with a deterioraion of the main character, but they go about in different ways. Both ways are equally interesting.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted February 27, 2012
A beautifully written book, as can be expected from Fitzgerald. The story was not as onsuming or interedtig as hoped, but thought-provoking nonetheless.
0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted July 1, 2011
I gave it a fair chance, a hundred pages, before deciding this was not a book for me. The good part, main character Anthony is convincingly and well made. The problems? As a person, I find Anthony so superficial, as intended, that I not only feel no connection to him, but extraordinarily rarely for me, I find him so thoroughly unlikeable that I haven't the smallest desire to find out what happens to him. Which brings me to another complaint. I'm not an action fanatic, but in a hundred pages almost nothing happens beyond finding out Anthony's heritage and lifestyle. The promised female interest has just appeared and at first glance, seems to have no greater depth than Anthony. Final complaint, the writing is so flowery and verbose that it gets in the way. It reads like Fitzgerald must have been paid by the word, with metaphors, similes, and adjectives so pervasive to be annoying to this reader (at random, I picked one of his over-the-top sentences and counted it at 48 words!). If you've read my previous reviews, you'll know that ripping a book is not my style. In fact, I have suspected myself of being too indulgent to written weaknesses. Nonetheless, this is a classic author? A book well reviewed? Hard to fathom. I quit and find no compulsion to return to Fitzgerald.
0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted August 13, 2010
This is my favorite Fitzgerald novel. Because the main characters were supposed to be based on Fitzgerald and his wife, the relationship between Anthony and Gloria was especially interesting. The 1920s are a period that fascinates me, so the background of this story was exciting for me. Fitzgerald's writing is great, and he has his usual sharp insights into society.
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Posted November 12, 2006
There often exists in our society this sort of tacit idea that if only we were wealthier then so many of our problems would be solved and happiness would be handed to us on a silver platter. Many men spend their entire lives looking up to the well to do, always stuck in a rat race to try and reach for wealth and try and find in it happiness. Yet Fitzgerald is able to decimate this mirage of this association between wealth and happiness. This is most importantly done through the characterization of Anthony Patch. He is first seen as a very hollow man, with no passion of any sort. He can¿t find meaning in his work, ridiculing those who do. The only thing he ever holds dear and in which he finds meaning is his marriage to a girl with almost the exact same problem. They seem to have no problems, being young, innately wealthy and free to do what they wish. Through the entire novel the two continue to throw ever more elaborate parties. Yet when the liquor wears off and the guests have left, they are left with an allegorical mess, completely meaningless. The only place they can truly find happiness is in their marriage. Fitzgerald is able to show how wealth often ruins men, highlighting the major problems of his era. The way in which Fitzgerald is able to create a character like Anthony Patch that represents the problems of such a gilded era makes the Beautiful and Damned worth reading. Not only does it eloquently represent an era that otherwise might seem so foreign, but it also has a universal message, that even today many struggle with.
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Posted November 12, 2006
F. Scott Fitzgerald has a wonderful style of writing that emphasizes important dialogue between characters or potentially confusing dialogue. He emphasizes these passages by writing them in a play format. This style along with other elements makes his book The Beautiful and Damned a book worth reading. One section of this book that Fitzgerald¿s style of writing was useful was in Book Two, Chapter 1 (The Radiant Hour), in the section entitled ¿Ushers.¿ All of the men were conversing with one another with little else going on about them. Had this section been written in a traditional style it would have been very hard to tell who was saying what. Another section where this was an effective writing style was in Book One, Chapter 1 (Anthony Patch), in the section entitled ¿A Flash-Back in Paradise.¿ The dialogue between the voice and the idea of Beauty was significant and didn¿t need any description of surroundings or time and place, so this style worked perfect for what this section was being used for. Fitzgerald¿s ability to connect several writing styles in his books makes his writing more effective that if it were written in one style only. The Beautiful and Damned is definitely a book worth reading, especially to read through F. Scott Fitzgerald¿s unique style.
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Posted November 11, 2006
¿It is the manner of life seldom to strike but always to wear away.¿ In The Beautiful and Damned, the author, F. Scott Fitzgerald creates a compelling struggle between life and his two dynamic characters Anthony and Gloria. Fitzgerald inserts his own questions of life and relationships in the offhand statements of his characters, usually too well placed to even be noticed by the reader. And such is the manner of The Beautiful and Damned, to strike at the soul and mind and to wear away our own definitions and conceptions through silent screams of indecision, fear and regret. Fitzgerald uses his understanding of literature and the power of words to convey two stories: one on the surface, and one, hidden below all plot lines, running deep within each character and within all people who have ever dared to live. He uses color and imagery to clue his readers to this underlying message. Also, Fitzgerald writes in a ¿play-like¿ manner, with certain character dialogues, a sense of staging, narration and even in some parts of the book even special ¿play-like¿ formatting. This method creates an image of the surface plot, the plot the reader can tangibly grasp: the raised print on the page, the crisp sheets, the grammar and the structure of the story. These elements leave behind all that the reader feels and understands on a deeper level inside the mind, making each reader digest all this information alone, because it is not just bluntly stated by Fitzgerald on paper. This story allows the reader to just read a story, or to jump into the structure of the mind and soul, freeing locked feelings and questions. Fitzgerald¿s power is to massage his words giving each phrase the power to strike the reader and let them see themselves for the first time.
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Posted November 11, 2006
The Beautiful and Damned is the story of Anthony and Gloria Patch as they struggle to maintain the passion of their young love through the trials and tribulations of an increasingly monotonous society. It is a triumph of the literary arts and contains some of the most beautiful prose ever to be written in all of literature. Readers will recognize immediately from the very first page Fitzgerald¡¯s distinctive style of writing. It is clearly evident from reading Fitzgerald¡¯s prose that each word in the novel was picked with careful consideration. Every word has a rational for its existence within the novel. Every single one of them are masterfully ordered and structured to form some of the most flowery prose in all of American literature. Fitzgerald¡¯s beautiful prose truly highlights all of the passion and the romance of the novel. They give further emphasis on the beauty and passion of Gloria and Anthony¡¯s young love and their desperate attempts to maintain it. In addition, Fitzgerald further breaks the monotony of his novel by introducing passages in script format. These segments of the novel truly display Fitzgerald¡¯s mastery of the dialogue. They provide him with an opportunity to develop characterizations using only dialogue and thus serve as a refreshing change of pace in the novel. Fitzgerald¡¯s mastery of the English language is easily apparent in every page of The Beautiful and Damned. It is a very easy recommendation for anyone who wishes to see the true beauty of the English language. It is an outstanding piece of literature and thus earns this reviewer¡¯s seal of approval.
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Posted November 10, 2006
In many of Fitzgerald¿s novels he often portrays marriage as the opposite of love. The Beautiful and Damned is no different. As the young Gloria and Anthony hurtle through their life with reckless abandon, their love slowly crumbles along with their marriage and sense of selves. Just as many of Fitzgerald¿s other lovers, the young couple marries and lives a loveless life. At the beginning of the novel the reader is introduced to Anthony Patch, a young man full of ideals, terrified of death and still searching for love. He meets his friend¿s cousin, the beautiful debutante, Gloria Gilbert, and falls in love with her. This is the beginning of his long fall from glory. While Anthony courts Gloria, he is at the high point in his life. He has his grandfather¿s approval, his friends are succeeding and he is quite happy with himself. Gloria is much the same, her family is successful and she can enjoy doing whatever she wishes with her life. She describes this position and state of mind as being ¿clean.¿ However, as soon as they get married, their problems start to grow. This is first seen at their marriage when Fitzgerald describes their emotions to the reader but there are feeling completely different about the marriage. Anthony is devoid of emotion and feels numb while Gloria is overflowing with emotion and is ready to burst. Things only get worse on their honeymoon. Their small differences only get bigger and bigger as they continue on their life. As the marriage continues their love for each other seems to shrink away until it becomes only a memory of what it once as. It is this memory that drives Anthony to begin drinking and to have an affair with Dot. At the end of the novel we see Anthony and Gloria, barely even connected to each other any longer, held together by mere duty. Although they have been granted the wealth they had always dreamed of having, neither Anthony or Gloria is as happy as they once were. This fact is only amplified by girl who comments that Gloria is pretty but doesn¿t seem ¿clean.¿ The symbolism behind this is that Gloria and Anthony, due to their marriage are no longer in love and happy but are instead married, the opposite. Fitzgerald uses this theme in many of his novels, but in no novel is as obvious or as poignantly put as in The Beautiful and Damned. In this portrait of the Jazz Age Fitzgerald certainly makes his point: Marriage destroys love.
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Posted November 10, 2006
An Excellent Read- The Beautiful And Damned F. Scott Fitzgerald utilized characterization to make his novel The Beautiful and Damned well worth reading. Fitzgerald¿s nontraditional use of characterization made his book a literary treasure. Continuing after his first novel This Side of Paradise, Fitzgerald did an excellent job of using his characters to create the literary classic The Beautiful and Damned. Fitzgerald captured the unusual nature of his two main characters Gloria and Anthony Patch successfully in this work of fiction. Fitzgerald made use of the ¿Jazz Age¿ to capture the youth of a generation in Gloria and Anthony. The success of their marriage is dependant on an inheritance and the characters¿ failure to grasp reality leads the couple into moral and monetary debt. The two drink too much, spend too much money, and party too much, which takes them down a path of torment and ruin. The unusual character choice by Fitzgerald makes this novel worthy of note, and definitely more appealing. The reluctance of Anthony to work continually darkens their situation and strains their relationship. Anthony himself summarizes the situation best: ¿I do nothing, for there¿s nothing I can do that¿s worth doing.¿ The pressure of the situation forces the couple¿s mental state into a rapid decline. Fitzgerald focused on their pursuit of happiness and self-indulgence to create a partnership between two characters that could only come from the mind of Fitzgerald himself. This gut-wrenching story of an ill-fated couple captures the essence of the ¿roaring twenties¿, and the drama of a love gone stale. The trials and tribulations that Gloria and Anthony face create a novel that I enjoyed and would definitely suggest for a delectable read. Fitzgerald¿s nontraditional characterization made his book excellent and his novel passed my evaluation with flying colors.
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Overview
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