Rating: 
Summary: "God, What A Sob Story !"
Review: "Zelda:A Biography," by Nancy Milford, is a depressing story about a woman (with a few bats in her belfry) torn by the never-ending clash of her husband's career and her own talent. A story I could have lived without!
Rating:
Summary: "God, What A Sob Story !"
Review: "Zelda:A Biography," by Nancy Milford, is a depressing story about a woman (with a few bats in her belfry) torn by the never-ending clash of her husband's career and her own talent. A story I could have lived without!
Rating:
Summary: "God, What A Sob Story !"
Review: "Zelda:A Biography," by Nancy Milford, is a depressing story about a woman (with a few bats in her belfry) torn by the never-ending clash of her husband's career and her own talent. A story I could have lived without!
Rating:
Summary: If you're looking for Zelda, you won't find her here.
Review: First off, let me say that this book is WELL researched and written. It is also very long and the font is very small! As for the subject matter, I was not moved. Sure, Zelda lived in a time when women were still pushed aside, but she had it made and I didn't feel a bit sorry for her. Zelda was well-off, she didn't have to grind away in the factories (like most women of the time), she traveled Europe, she lived in mansions and she got to pursue her ambition to learn ballet. Yet she's constantly whining about "overwork" and that she's so "sick" that it made me hate her even more. The author reprints tons of Zelda's letters to F Scott and she WAS a talented writer. She did have a vivid imagination. It's just that she whines for no good reason and she's presented in a very UNSYMPATHIC way! A book that gets me this stirred up deserves no less than 5 stars!
Rating: 
Summary: Boo-hoo
Review: First off, let me say that this book is WELL researched and written. It is also very long and the font is very small! As for the subject matter, I was not moved. Sure, Zelda lived in a time when women were still pushed aside, but she had it made and I didn't feel a bit sorry for her. Zelda was well-off, she didn't have to grind away in the factories (like most women of the time), she traveled Europe, she lived in mansions and she got to pursue her ambition to learn ballet. Yet she's constantly whining about "overwork" and that she's so "sick" that it made me hate her even more. The author reprints tons of Zelda's letters to F Scott and she WAS a talented writer. She did have a vivid imagination. It's just that she whines for no good reason and she's presented in a very UNSYMPATHIC way! A book that gets me this stirred up deserves no less than 5 stars!
Rating:
Summary: If you're looking for Zelda, you won't find her here.
Review: Given this book's formidable reputation as a landmark of female biography, I found it a surprising disappointment. Although I tried and tried to get close to Zelda - who was at best a very elusive character - Ms Milford simply would not let me anywhere near her.The author's writing has a cold, dispassionate quality. She has an irritating habit of mentioning obscure details (names of people, for example), and either explaining them much later or not explaining them at all (her more recent book on Edna St Millay shares this technique). The effect is curiously distancing; as if the author knows far more than she lets on and does not care to explain it all to mere mortals like us. Given the importance of ballet in Zelda's later life, for example, why is a picture of her as a young teenager in a ballet dress included without any comment whatsoever? Did she learn ballet as a girl? Was she any good at it? Was there anything to indicate that it would later become an obsession? These are important and enlightening details that we never learn. Nor do we hear of anything beyond Zelda's death, which rather abruptly ends the book, offering little insight into her later legacy and reputation. It's as if we're constantly trying to spot the subject in the middle distance, only to find Milford's head in the way every time. Factually, the book is faultless, which only makes this distance even more frustrating. I wanted to find Zelda; to know this fascinating person and to form my own conclusions about her, but she remained completely elusive amongst the cold, clinical facts.
Rating: 
Summary: "Zelda," By Nancy Milford
Review: I absolutely adored this book. It is extremely depressing at times to read considering the life of the woman the book is based upon, but other than that, it was fascinating. Milford' writing style is unique as well as informative and quite objective. The details about Zelda's life could only come from an author who has done her research. I would definetly recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: excellent resource
Review: I am still reading this because it is important supplemental reading to all of of Scott's works and hers. It was a tragic blend of fantasy and reality , ending or course with her tortuous death and his untimely death in Hollywood. Who needs a soap opera? Excellent usage of personal letters , and linkages to Scot's works.
Rating:
Summary: Somewhat skewed look at an idiosyncratic talent
Review: I re-read this as a sometime writer myself, and first read it when I was about fourteen. Now it appears to me that Zelda created original images in her writing -- as well as emotional connections -- that hadn't been put together quite that way before. Her letters, as quoted by the author, teem with improvisational phrases, original images, and sometimes deep insight, although her use of the self-important elegiac tone is typically, generally, in our culture only granted to certain male writers. Fitgerald was eager -- obsessed -- to make a name for himself, and her talent (which came through even in her madness) became his plagarized muse. Both of them fell victim to these circumstances and mindset.
After reading this bio I would bet dollars to donuts that the image that kicks off "Tender is the Night," "the tan prayer-rug of a beach," was thought up by Zelda. This bio makes clear, to my mind at least, that Scott, acutely aware of the demands of the literary craft, recognized and basically stole her strikingly visual phrases, to sprinkle through his own writing; as well as making her life the subject of several of his stories and novels.
The drawback to this book and what makes it progressively harder to read is that, in the latter half, the author Milford often uses narrative structure to drain both any sympathy for Zelda's condition and any empathy which admiration for Zelda's talent might cause. Often after a typically striking example of Zelda's prose, Milford will follow it with, "She was truly alone now," or "Her face looked haggard as she..." Milford seems to focus on such not-really-telling "details" of Zelda's life to hide her own (Milford's) basic lack of empathy.
It is tempting to read this bio and then throw up one's hands at both of them, as mere pawns of Twenties Madison Avenue or of the jaded jet-set; and paint Scott as the sufferer. (Scott used Zelda's imagistic prose, but it didn't go the other way around; Zelda's autobiographical novel, "Save Me the Waltz," made her narrative limitations clear.) If you read carefully Zelda's letters excerpted throughout the bio and are familiar with Scott's work, you will retain some sympathy for the both of them, and have no doubt that if Scott hadn't had her words, her self, and her insights to use here and there, there would be no Fitzgerald legacy.
Rating:
Summary: the best book I've read this year
Review: Okay, this is a biography. But the fact it is truth makes it so much more captivating. It is a loong book and took me forever to read, but it was definately worth it. I reccomend it except that it is long. otherwise the book is flawless and it made me cry. There's your sign to read it!
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