Stories that capture both the magic and disappointment of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald’s lives.
Raffetto’s collection of stories is haunted by one of American literature’s most glamorous and tragic couples.
The romantic but troubled relationship between the writer F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda permeates all three of these collected stories to some degree. From beyond the grave, Scott Fitzgerald narrates “Young Scott and Zelda” (“I died at the peak of my writing powers”), commemorating a time when his youthful confidence was boundless despite obstacles (Scott’s mother disapproves of his novel writing, preferring him to pen ads, and editor Maxwell Perkins doubts that Scott’s book will sell many copies). Zelda, ambitious herself, doesn’t want to marry. Yet, suddenly, life becomes a fairytale—Scott’s novel is a best-seller, and Zelda agrees to wed. In “Three A.M.,” Scott no longer narrates, and the couple’s lives sour. Scott and Zelda throw wild parties, flirt with others, and accumulate debts. Scott is often a mean drunk, while Zelda develops mental health issues that lead to her hospitalization. “Kristen B.,” the last story, is only peripherally about the Fitzgeralds. A young woman, Kristin, shows her Scott and Zelda screenplay to a producer who sexually assaults her. Emotionally scarred, Kristen begins an intense relationship with Holden, a sensitive ex-baseball player with a violent family history. Well-chosen vignettes from the Fitzgeralds’ lives fill the first two stories, such as Scott callously kicking a tray out of the hands of a woman selling food and Zelda’s scorn at Scott’s flinching when he dives into water. But in “Three A.M.,” the narrator’s intrusive opinions weaken the story; readers are told it’s laughable to imagine Scott and Ernest Hemingway as lovers, and that Zelda would probably have left Scott “if their story had taken place sixty years in the future.” “Kristen B.” is the strongest of the three stories, capturing the flavor of the Fitzgeralds in modern times. Like Zelda and Scott, Kristen and Holden are damaged, unable to assimilate into the practical world of 9-to-5 jobs and sedate married life. Unlike the Fitzgeralds, Kristen and Holden move beyond trauma (albeit not in an ideal manner) and end on a hopeful note.
Stories that capture both the magic and disappointment of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald’s lives.Pub Date: April 22, 2024
ISBN: 9780990614982
Page Count: 250
Publisher: Noovella.com
Review Posted Online: July 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.
Stockett heads to Mississippi for another historical novel about feisty women.
This time, perhaps recalling criticisms of cultural appropriation in The Help (2009), she sticks to feisty white women, with one exception. The setting is Oxford in 1933. For two miserable years, 11-year-old Meg has lived in “the Orphan,” a county asylum for parentless girls. Chairlady Garnett—a villain so one-note she’d twirl a mustache if she had one—makes it her mission to ostracize the older girls she deems unadoptable, stigmatizing them as offspring of the “feebleminded” mothers who abandoned them. She particularly has it in for smart, sassy Meg, who refuses to believe her mother’s mysterious disappearance was deliberate. Elsewhere in Oxford, Birdie Calhoun comes to visit her sister Frances, who married a wealthy banker, to ask for money on behalf of their mother and grandmother back in Footely. Frances isn’t thrilled by this reminder of her impoverished small-town origins. But she’s trying to climb up in Oxford society by volunteering at the Orphan, the asylum’s books need to be done before the state inspector shows up in a few weeks, and Birdie is a bookkeeper. Having neatly arranged to keep Birdie in town and draw these two storylines together, Stockett goes on to spin a compulsively readable yarn with enough plot for a half-dozen novels. Birdie and Meg become friends, Meg is adopted despite Garnett’s best efforts, Meg’s mother turns up at the Orphan demanding to know where her child is—and that’s less than a quarter of the way through a long, winding narrative that keeps piling on more dramatic developments until all loose ends are neatly, if hastily, wrapped up in the final pages. Stockett might be making a point about Southern women facing facts and standing up for themselves, but mostly this is just a satisfyingly twisty tale that should make a great miniseries.
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9781954118812
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
Mostly charming, sometimes twee, with some really lovely things to say about poetry.
And now for some lessons in poetry and typesetting.
After Lessons in Chemistry (2022), a debut that became one of the most popular books of recent years, Garmus applies her unique comic sensibility to the story of Batter Gray, a man named after a family dog of mythic talents. A poetry maven who was reading Auden as a fourth grader, he was raised by a type-designer mother and historian father who dearly hoped he would choose some more viable profession than poetry. But via an amazing stroke of luck, he lands a job after college at Peck & Peck, an illustrious literary journal located in a beautiful building in New York City. He’s at the very bottom of the complex and dysfunctional totem pole, making copies in the basement, struggling not to run afoul of the cantankerous editor-in-chief, Salton Peck, or his smarmy assistant, Dexter York, both of whom have taken an instant dislike to our hero (and can never get his name right. Few people can). And to be honest, Batter is not without his flaws. The novel bogs down a bit in the middle, with Salton constantly excoriating his staff in ALL CAPS and much ado over the possibility that submissions have been taken outside the building, which is forbidden. Along the way, many, many famous poets are name-checked, as are many typefaces, since Batter has been raised to instantly identify a font in the wild. The best example of this occurs during his brief sojourn in jail: “The thing I kind of admired about Motherfucker II, besides his manners, was this huge tattoo he had on his neck that read I will fuck you up in ITC Bolt. Call me my mother’s son, but whoever inked it nailed the kerning.” The narrative picks up steam toward the end, as bad guys become good guys, mysteries are solved, and Batter throws one hell of a party.
Mostly charming, sometimes twee, with some really lovely things to say about poetry.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2026
ISBN: 9781668251065
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
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