West Of Sunset
Reviewed By Janet Mawdesley July 13, 2015
Author Stewart O'Nan
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ISBN: 9781925266559
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
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Website: http://www.allenandunwin.com
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Stewart O’Nan has shown a rare understanding of the mental anguish suffered by F. Scott Fitzgerald in his final years in Hollywood as he struggled to regain some of his past glory, cope with a life that was fast unravelling and come to terms with being offered a second chance at love.
Scott has travelled far from his halcyon days of Hollywood glamour as a young man riding the waves of success. He has had to have his beloved wife Zelda placed in a mental asylum as he could no longer care for her. His fliting with alcohol has seen him turn into a serious alcoholic, down on his luck and broke.
His daughter Scottie is at school on the other side of the country, something he can ill afford but struggles to maintain as it helps keep some of the hideous truth from her and allows her to lead a normal existence.
He is offered a chance at once again joining the writing team in Hollywood as a screenwriter working on new screenplays for the now booming movie industry, an offer he grabs with both hands. He travels back once again to the glitz and glamour of Hollywood and the people he once knew well.
The essence of the book moves between his past life, his distress and worry over Zelda and what appears to be his inability to write, and falling in love with society journalist Sheilah Graham, a woman who, on first looks, reminds him of the ethereal, quirkiness of his beloved Zelda. So much so that he fears she is a twin.
Beautifully written with deep insight, the last years of F. Scott Fitzgerald are once again bought to life vividly and compassionately as each of his days, dreams, struggles and challenges are captured as if he were still a member of current the Hollywood glitterati.
It paints a delicate picture of man struggling to cope in a world he no longer recognises and a people who can be as funny, caring and kind as they can be cruel, careless and false.
Not a novel for the fainthearted, it is a wonderful look at the incredible days of Hollywood, Humphrey Bogart, Hemmingway and many more, the people who originally put the ‘glam’ in Hollywood, through the eyes of a man who once had it all.