Reviews
Exhuming a character buried in a famous novel sounds like a late-night violation of sacred ground, but if someone talented does the digging, who can resist the temptation to see what's there? Especially considering how many times our ghoulish curiosity has been rewarded. What sort of woman would marry the captain of the Pequod? (Check out Ahab's Wife, by Sena Jeter Naslund.) How did Jane Eyre's employer happen to have an insane wife in his attic? (That's revealed in Wide Sargasso Sea, by Jean Rhys.) Would Tiny Tim be grateful to Ebenezer Scrooge later in life? (Read Louis Bayard's Mr. Timothy.) And now we can finally find out what happened to one of the beautiful and damned: Daisy Buchanan, the siren of F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic, The Great Gatsby. Scholars have long known that Fitzgerald based her and several other alluring characters on Genevra King, the 16-year-old daughter of a Chicago stockbroker. Genevra and Scott met at a country club party in St. Paul in 1915 while she was visiting a friend and he was home for winter break from Princeton. They carried on an intense romance by mail, but by the time he visited again, her interest had faded. Fitzgerald wrote later, "She ended up throwing me over with the most supreme indifference and boredom." Needless to say, he never got over her. At his request, she destroyed his voluminous r, "Compelling and perfectly evoked....This is a wonderful book." --Audrey Niffenegger, author of The Time Traveler's Wife, "Compelling and perfectly evoked....This is a wonderful book." --Audrey Niffenegger, author of The Time Traveler's Wife "Gatsby's Girl is an extraordinary book, as elegaic and evocative as much of Fitzgerald's own work." --Kevin Baker, author of Dreamland, Paradise Alley and Strivers Row "Fascinating...tantalizing...An entirely pleasurable tour-de-force." --Anita Shreve, author of The Pilot's Wife "Though this is a work of fiction, it should be read by anyone interested in Fitzgerald's work." --Sarah E. White Bookpage "A wonderfully elegiac novel that evokes the tenor and times of the 'Lost Generation' . . . marvelous." --Dorman T. Shindler The Denver Post "Compelling . . . a sad, beautiful, erotically charged picture." --Dana Kletter The San Francisco Chronicle "A fascinating rendering of the tragedy that was Fitzgerald's life...Highly recommended." Library Journal Starred "Imaginative reconstruction . . . Thoroughly researched and persuasively written, this novel rings true." --Barbara Fisher Boston Globe, "Imaginative reconstruction . . . Thoroughly researched and persuasively written, this novel rings true." --Barbara Fisher, Inspired by the ephemeral but intense historical romance between F. Scott Fitzgerald and his first love, Chicago debutante Ginevra King, Preston bases her sexy, self-centered title character both on Fitzgerald's crush and the female characters (Daisy Buchanan, etc.) for which she was his muse. Ginevra Perry is the spoiled 16-year-old expert flirt who catches Scott Fitzgerald's fancy in 1916 in this gracefully written if drifting novel. The first part of the book excerpts the earnest, epistolary romance between the Lake Forest, Ill., society girl and her less prosperous suitor while she's at boarding school in Connecticut and he's at Princeton. Fickle Ginevra ditches Scott for handsome but dull aviator Billy Granger, with whom she is doomed to a "dried-out husk" of a marriage, but privately continues to keep tabs on Scott while reading his novels for signs of herself in his female characters. This novel, which Ginevra narrates in a mannered, period voice, follows her into her late 30s and strives to echo the sense of loss and promise gone wrong found in Fitzgerald's books. Preston ( Jackie by Josie ) launches the story from a clever conceit, but the narrator's lack of self-reflection and the gentle arc of her cushioned if not always happy life make for a listless read. (May) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
