Sorrow is the only faithful one Book

Taylor's biography of the mythical Fitzgerald couple is a fascinating read - although probably a biased one, and certainly not the last word on two extraordinary figures. The huge work she has undertaken (most of all, researches of all kinds that gives her book a spectacular scope) is admirable, and it helps in bringing vividly to life, from beginning to end, the tumultuous relationship of Scott and Zelda. Here are two complex persons that, for better and for worse, have become emblematic of their era, and Taylor does a great job in showing us what really was behind the myth - and what she shows is often tragic, pathetic, and heartbreaking. She obviously has a bias against Scott, and sometimes she lets that overtake her objectivity, but it's pretty clear that the writer was as destructive to himself as he was to his wife. Zelda comes out of this book as a poignant character, a fragile, extravagant, talented, original, flawed beauty, a bird desperate to fly but unable to to spread her wings. The pages about her illness are and fall from grace are infinitely sad, but Scott's demise is more sordid. Taylor makes some little mistakes (for example about Jean Harlow), misspells some names, fills sometimes pages with unnecessary information (we don't need the whole biographies of all the doctors that Zelda encountered), and she's also prone to repetitions, but still, her achievement is quite notable, and her book is a brilliant introduction to a doomed couple whose tortured love affair remains devastatingly incandescent.