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A review by claudiaswisher
Call Me Zelda by Erika Robuck
5.0
For me, this book starts with my mother. She, with her high school education, knew literary secrets...she knew Dill in TKAM was Truman Capote. And she knew F. Scott Fitzgerald, for all his genius, used his wife's work and revised it as his own. I can remember in high school saying that and being laughed at.
Guess what? Mama knows best. Robuck's novels are amazing views into the lives of self-destructive artists. Her HEMINGWAY'S GIRL drew me in and this book may be even better...
Zelda is not the narrator: Anna, a psychiatric nurse who meets Zelda and Scott under dire circumstances, is. Anna becomes intrigued with Zelda and Scott and their relationship. Devoted one day, raging the next. How could anyone stay sane? They didn't.
Anna falls under Zelda's charm, and attracted by her vulnerability, channels her own grief into helping this couple. She observes, she assists...but always she champions Zelda.
Robuck does such a good job of showing how talented Zelda really was -- Scott hated that she wrote...he took her diaries, he reworked them, he raged when she published her novel before he was able to publish THIS SIDE OF PARADISE. He resented the fact he was reduced to writing short stories to pay for their extravagant lifestyle. But writing was not her only talent: she was a dancer and a visual artist. But her fragility doomed her...and his doomed him.
Anna desperately wants to save Zelda...to the point she almost forgets to save herself.
Art, redemption, love, grief and loss; Robuck touches on all these issues...and her words are beautiful:
"They both began to cry like two lost, scared children.
I...wondered if prayers were triaged
The material he thought he owned was Zelda's life
A stew of wealthy, useless people
Scott and Zelda slowly killing each other by stray bullets meant for themselves
The only thing predictable about the Fitzgeralds was their unpredictability.
But peace never stayed long in the Fitzgerald house
The children make us. We're forever tethered.
I had to help Zelda honor the sweetness in her former life and who she was before they came apart
Art is a form of madness
When I am in a creative place I am outseide of this time and space
Then Art is an addiction. Some can handle their art and some cannot
The act of art is so important. It is expression, identity. It helps others cope."
And Robuck on the Fitzgeralds in her own words, not Anna's: "Their continued devotion to each other in spite of all their miseries, affairs, and tragedies was truly as if they were connected at the soul."
There it is...and yes, they were.
Guess what? Mama knows best. Robuck's novels are amazing views into the lives of self-destructive artists. Her HEMINGWAY'S GIRL drew me in and this book may be even better...
Zelda is not the narrator: Anna, a psychiatric nurse who meets Zelda and Scott under dire circumstances, is. Anna becomes intrigued with Zelda and Scott and their relationship. Devoted one day, raging the next. How could anyone stay sane? They didn't.
Anna falls under Zelda's charm, and attracted by her vulnerability, channels her own grief into helping this couple. She observes, she assists...but always she champions Zelda.
Robuck does such a good job of showing how talented Zelda really was -- Scott hated that she wrote...he took her diaries, he reworked them, he raged when she published her novel before he was able to publish THIS SIDE OF PARADISE. He resented the fact he was reduced to writing short stories to pay for their extravagant lifestyle. But writing was not her only talent: she was a dancer and a visual artist. But her fragility doomed her...and his doomed him.
Anna desperately wants to save Zelda...to the point she almost forgets to save herself.
Art, redemption, love, grief and loss; Robuck touches on all these issues...and her words are beautiful:
"They both began to cry like two lost, scared children.
I...wondered if prayers were triaged
The material he thought he owned was Zelda's life
A stew of wealthy, useless people
Scott and Zelda slowly killing each other by stray bullets meant for themselves
The only thing predictable about the Fitzgeralds was their unpredictability.
But peace never stayed long in the Fitzgerald house
The children make us. We're forever tethered.
I had to help Zelda honor the sweetness in her former life and who she was before they came apart
Art is a form of madness
When I am in a creative place I am outseide of this time and space
Then Art is an addiction. Some can handle their art and some cannot
The act of art is so important. It is expression, identity. It helps others cope."
And Robuck on the Fitzgeralds in her own words, not Anna's: "Their continued devotion to each other in spite of all their miseries, affairs, and tragedies was truly as if they were connected at the soul."
There it is...and yes, they were.