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Francis Scott Fitzgerald was born in 1896 in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and educated at Princeton. Stationed in Alabama, he met and later married Zelda Sayre. His first novel, This Side of Paradise published in 1920, was a tremendous critical and commercial success. Fitzgerald followed with The Beautiful and the Damned in 1922, The Great Gatsby in 1925 and Tender is the Night in 1934. He was working on The Last Tycoon (1941) when he died, in Hollywood, in 1940.
One of the French novelists, I can never remember accurately whether it was Maurois or Mauriac, said that 'the door slams shut on a writer before the age of 12' - meaning that all his raw material has been formed by then. It feels a bit early but I know what he meant. Likewise, perhaps all the influential books are those encountered in one's formative years. Fitzgerald had many faults - unpursued ideas, incomplete themes - but in Gatsby he created a sleek monster, a metaphor for that society of the rich dangerous to the heart even when passive Review by Frank Delaney, whose books include 'The Sins of the Mothers' (Kirkus UK)
