Call Me Zelda by Erika Robuck
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Just released: May 7, 2013
Publisher: NAL Trade
Genre: 1920s
Paperback: 352 pages
Rating: 5
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"Everything in the ward seemed different now, and I no longer felt its calming presence. The Fitzgeralds stirred something in me that had been dormant for a long time, and I was not prepared to face it...."
From New York to Paris, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald reigned as king and queen of the Jazz Age, seeming to float on champagne bubbles above the mundane cares of the world. But to those who truly knew them, the endless parties were only a distraction from their inner turmoil, and from a love that united them with a scorching intensity.
When Zelda is committed to a Baltimore psychiatric clinic in 1932, vacillating between lucidity and madness in her struggle to forge an identity separate from her husband, the famous writer, she finds a sympathetic friend in her nurse, Anna Howard. Held captive by her own tragic past, Anna is increasingly drawn into the Fitzgeralds’ tumultuous relationship. As she becomes privy to Zelda’s most intimate confessions, written in a secret memoir meant only for her, Anna begins to wonder which Fitzgerald is the true genius. But in taking ever greater emotional risks to save Zelda, Anna may end up paying a far higher price than she intended....
My two-bits:
In-a-word(s): faded dance card
This book houses two storylines that are equally interesting to read.
One story is composed of glimpses of Zelda and her well-being and not-so-well being with and without her husband, Scott. This story follows Zelda at the start of her mental illness problems.
The second storyline follows the life of Zelda's nurse, Anna and the positive effect Zelda has on her personal life.
* review copy courtesy of publisher
* part of event: Flappers at Floyd's
