FICTION

West of Sunset

by Stewart O'Nan
Viking. Jan. 2015. 304p. ISBN 9780670785957. $27.95; ebk. ISBN 9781101608395. F
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Prolific O'Nan (The Odds) explores F. Scott Fitzgerald's final years, when he worked unhappily as a Hollywood screenwriter. The novelist is on the skids after the publication of "The Crack-Up," his mournful, self-deprecating essay that drew scathing reviews and may have ruined his career. His frustrations with the superficialities of Hollywood and autocratic studio heads planted the seeds for his uncompleted work, The Last Tycoon. We get zinging repartee from the likes of Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, and Humphrey Bogart, but on the whole this novel is overlaid with sadness.
VERDICT O'Nan taps into primary-source material on Fitzgerald to craft a realistic piece of historical fiction, inverting incidents from Sheilah Graham's 1957 tell-all Beloved Infidel to Fitzgerald's point of view and adopting the despairing tone of "The Crack-Up." Fitzgerald comes across as a haunting, multifaceted, sympathetic character whose Midwestern morality leaves him duty-bound to daughter Scottie and his institutionalized wife, Zelda, even as he begins his affair with Graham (which is chastely described). The slide into drugs, alcoholism, and the heart disease that shortened his life is tragic to behold; Fitzgerald fans will mourn his loss all over again. [See Prepub Alert, 7/14/14.]
Reviewed by Reba Leiding, emeritus, James Madison Univ. Lib., Harrisonburg, VA , Nov 15, 2014
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