William Collins The Beautiful and Damned

How to describe the entirety of this novel?Often I will put one or two lines on Goodreads after finishing a book. For The Beautiful and Damned, the lines were as follows:“What a beautiful and strangely desolate novel. My goodness.”And The Beautiful and Damned is exactly that. It soars from theatrical beauty and then plummets to cold desolation, to unfolding of horrific emotion. The characters are at once vivid and on the verge of crumbling. The prose, as ever, is delicious, decadent and evocative.The theatricality comes mainly in the form of Gloria, a shining beacon for the indulgence of the Jazz Age, who delights in the social freedom and seemingly exquisite nature of her life, and who enthrals Anthony Patch, a writer and the narrator of this tale of excess. Within the first few pages of their encounters, it occurred to me that both characters seemed to represent both Scott and Zelda. Once this idea had taken hold, I found it impossible to shake off, and by the time I closed the book on the final page, I was convinced that this was what The Beautiful and Damned was: Scott’s wishful thinking for their life and his bitterness and adoration for his wife poured into a single novel.Which is heartbreaking, but it makes for a compelling and achingly wistful tale. Admittedly, it took me a good few pages to get into the story – I was waiting for Gloria to appear and ignite the fireworks – but when the lady arrived, I was gripped. I followed every encounter with wide eyes, and I admit that I had no idea how the novel would end, if it would be happy or not. When the end did indeed come, I found the climax very startling, very sudden. Some might argue that it was too sudden, that the novel feels cut off or rushed because of it, but I disagree. It left me shocked, but realising later on that it had been building up to it, with both characters hurtling towards trouble and not knowing how to stop. It was gripping, wonderful, and agonising all at once.Anyone who knows me will tell you how much I adore Fitzgerald’s style, and The Beautiful and Damned only reinforced this love for his writing. It is a complex exploration of human character, and the heights it goes to are dizzying, as are the sudden falls.I highly, highly recommend this. I cannot recommend it enough. The Great Gatsby might be considered his masterpiece, but I much prefer the characters in The Beautiful and Damned. They’ve stuck in my head much longer than Gatsby or Daisy Buchanan have.And that really is saying something.

I loved this book.It sets up it’s characters as wealthy, beautiful, privileged, educated, imbued with imagination and dreams.Only to have them squander everything from money to love, illusions overturned, with harsh reality crushing them.Gorgeous, glorious writing.F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote beautifully, he lived too fast and died too young.Maybe that tragic darkness makes his sentences shine that much brighter.

The quality of this book is absolutely AWFUL. I didn’t realise the copy I was buying was independently published. The paper is so thin you can see the words from the next page through the page you’re reading and the text has just been dumped in, in the most lazy way. It’s like they had a word document and just printed it into a book without a thought for how to actually format it in a way people can read. The paragraphs are all over the place, the spacing between words is off and the chapter heads are just randomly printed in a larger font.It’s also a really weird size- not the size or feel of a normal paperback book. It’s much bigger and flimsier which makes it really hard to read comfortably.It feels very amateur and I’m really surprised this book is even allowed to be sold. I will be returning my copy as it’s just unreadable

F.Scott Fitzgerald's reputation rests chiefly on his magnum opus - the irrepressible The Great Gatsby, however sometime before Gatsby came this novel - the tale of a pair of socialites who marry with great hope and passion, but whose fortunes are soon undermined by alcohol, money, and regret. Gloria and Anthony's presumptuous attitude and decadent leanings are portrayed as indicative of 1920s US culture, and the novel is a very one-sided affair that leaves little room for hope or optimism. Despite this it's an absorbing read, and as the fortunes of the pair start to shift, the underlying tensions are laid bare, and the once united lovers start to become prised apart by their own greed and ambition.

Excellent