In 1937 Hollywood, gossip columnist Sheilah Graham’s star is on the rise, while literary wonder boy F. Scott Fitzgerald’s career is slowly drowning in booze. But the once-famous author, desperate to make money penning scripts for the silver screen, is charismatic enough to attract the gorgeous Miss Graham, a woman who exposes the secrets of others while carefully guarding her own. Like … Fitzgerald’s hero Jay Gatsby, Graham has meticulously constructed a life far removed from the poverty of her childhood in London’s slums. And like Gatsby, the onetime guttersnipe learned early how to use her charms to become a hardworking success; she is feted and feared by both the movie studios and their luminaries.
A notorious drunk famously married to the doomed Zelda, Fitzgerald fell hard for his “Shielah” (he never learned to spell her name), a shrewd yet softhearted woman—both a fool for love and nobody’s fool—who would stay with him and help revive his career until his tragic death three years later. Working from Sheilah’s memoirs, interviews, and letters, Sally Koslow revisits their scandalous love affair and Graham’s dramatic transformation in London, bringing Graham and Fitzgerald gloriously to life with the color, glitter, magic, and passion of 1930s Hollywood.
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For those obsessed with F. Scott Fitzgerald or the 1930s, this historical fiction title is 100% for you! Koslow has clearly taken the time to research this era, painting a picture of glamour, glitz and the dazzling drama that many already know about the notoriously drunk Scott Fitzgerald. u2063u2063
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She’s added another layer by introducing readers to Sheilah Graham, a Hollywood gossip columnist who becomes Fitzgerald’s lover in the final years of his life. While the opening five chapters capture Graham in the midst of her love affair, readers are quickly transported back in time to the 1910s and follow Sheilah’s journey as a young girl up until her first encounter with Scott. These details and unveiling of Graham’s history and secrets were exactly what I needed to stay on the edge of my seat, craving to know more behind this rising star and how her story impacted her relationship with Fitzgerald and the way it evolved until the very end.u2063u2063
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I felt all the emotions while reading this book: plenty of witty banter to make readers laugh along with the characters, several instances of drunk Fitzgerald where I rolled my eyes and questioned why Graham was still clinging to him, and numerous occasions of extreme vulnerability between Scott and Sheilah that made me shed a few tears. u2063u2063
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This was an enchanting and refreshing story about one of America’s most iconic literary figures that I definitely recommend! u2063
Having had enough of narcissists for this lifetime, I found the book to be a decent read about a self-indulgent, dishonest, manipulative basically worthless human being. Not nearly as smart as she’d like us to think she is. A survivor yes, but at what cost and what did she contribute?
I started this book and decided I really wasn’t interested in reading a story about F. Scott Fitzgerald in Hollywood at that particular moment, preferring something lighter and fluffier. But I decided to read a few pages, and the next thing I knew I’d finished the book.
Graham led an extraordinary life, rising being abandoned at a Jewish orphanage and forging a new existence as a successful gossip columnist in Hollywood. She felt she and Fitzgerald were soulmates, but their relationship was tested constantly by his alcoholism and his own anti-Semitism.
Author Sally Koslow’s fictional version of the romance between gossip columnist Sheilah Graham and Fitzgerald reads like a memoir but moves with the speed of a page-turner. The voice she gives Sheilah is nuanced and touching; the prose itself is richly detailed and evokes the glamour. What is unexpected is Koslow’s portrayal of the dark underbelly of Hollywood with its anti-Semitism.