Melissa’s Review: West of Sunset by Stewart O’Nan

West of Sunset 
written by Stewart O’Nan
published by Viking, 2015

find it here: (affiliate links) Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Book Depository, Goodreads

Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book in exchange  for an honest review.

Did I enjoy this book: I’m not as obsessed with F. Scott Fitzgerald as everyone else seems to be (read: I haven’t read The Great Gatsby since high school and I have no desire to see the recent movie), so I don’t have much background knowledge about his life. I pretended this was just any other novel about any other man with a crazy wife and a crazy past, and I’ll tell you what: it’s really, really sad. Even the happy parts are sad. I wish I knew enough about Fitzgerald’s life to compare it with what happens in the novel, but since I don’t I’ll just speak generally. The writing is well done and smooth, but often drier than I prefer; I would not have picked this novel if it hadn’t been sent to me as a review request. It’s a lovely, sad little book, but it just wasn’t my favorite.

Would I recommend it: If you’re into Fitzgerald, you’ll probably enjoy it.

 

About the book – from Goodreads: In 1937, F. Scott Fitzgerald was a troubled, uncertain man whose literary success was long over. In poor health, with his wife consigned to a mental asylum and his finances in ruins, he struggled to make a new start as a screenwriter in Hollywood. By December 1940, he would be dead of a heart attack.

Those last three years of Fitzgerald’s life, often obscured by the legend of his earlier Jazz Age glamour, are the focus of Stewart O’Nan’s gorgeously and gracefully written novel. With flashbacks to key moments from Fitzgerald’s past, the story follows him as he arrives on the MGM lot, falls in love with brassy gossip columnist Sheilah Graham, begins work on The Last Tycoon, and tries to maintain a semblance of family life with the absent Zelda and daughter, Scottie.

Fitzgerald’s orbit of literary fame and the Golden Age of Hollywood is brought vividly to life through the novel’s romantic cast of characters, from Dorothy Parker and Ernest Hemingway to Humphrey Bogart. A sympathetic and deeply personal portrait of a flawed man who never gave up in the end, even as his every wish and hope seemed thwarted, West of Sunset confirms O’Nan as “possibly our best working novelist” (Salon).