marriage – The Saucy Mama

Started: July 24th
Finished: July 31st
TSM Rating: 4/5

This book was definitely different from the romance I’ve been reading lately. Don’t get me wrong, there is lots of love in this book, but not romance, which was why I picked it. Just for something a little different.

Doug is in mourning. He’s 29 years old and his wife died in a plane crash. He’s a man set adrift, unanchored, unable to find his way back to dry land. He’s allowed himself to descend into the morasses of grief and hopelessness, avoiding the rest of the living world, including his stepson who has lost his mother and is also adrift in his grief.

Throughout the book he repeats these four sentences:

I had a wife. Her name was Hailey. Now she’s gone. And so am I.
How to Talk to a Widower, multiple pages

As he’s stuck in this rut, his pregnant twin sister decides to leave her husband, while his baby sister is planning to marry his friend, whom she met while sitting shiva for Hailey. On top of it all, his father had a stroke and is only lucid enough to be remember that Hailey has died about five percent of the time.

Grief is a funny thing. It has no schedule or timeline. It can put you in a strangle hold so tight that it feels like it will never let go. But with time, patience, and little grace you can get there.

While Doug isn’t quite a lovable protagonist, you do feel for him and the depths of his despair and his apprehensions about moving forward and on and what that means for his wife’s memory.

Started: March 21st
Finished: April 5th
TSM Rating: -/5

So this took a while.😅

I full intended to finish this book before the end of March, but it took a while for me to really get into…like over one hundred pages. After finishing it, I’m left with mixed feelings. On one hand, it was well written. On the other it was repetitive.

I was left feeling that, though they ran in very cerebral circles, rubbing elbows with some of the greatest writers and artists of the 20th century, their life lack a lot of substance, although they both seemed to be striving for meaning and value.

This is a fictionalized version of the Fitzgerald marriage as seen through Zelda Fitzgerald’s eyes. Through her view, you see a woman who longs for independence, a little self-worth, and also to be seen as someone of worth by her husband and the world. Through her view, F. Scott Fitzgerald is an emotional, abusive, narcissistic, possibly homosexual, alcoholic who spends beyond his means and can’t get out of his own way.

In reading the acknowledgements at the end, Fowler said that in researching for the book biographers for both were either Team Zelda or Team Scott in the matter of who ruined whom. While reading, I did stop to peruse both their Wiki pages (I know, not always the most reliable source), but it was clear that whomever wrote Scott’s page was Team Scott.

Again, this book is a work of fiction but if I had to choose, I would say neither and both. I think they may both have needed up the way they did anyway. Early in the book, Zelda’s father observes Scott’s excessive drinking and tries to warn his daughter. A warning she doesn’t heed and it comes back to hahbtbher as Scott’s drinking is a point of contention in their marriage. Drinking was always going to be a hindrance for him whether he was married to Zelda or someone else.

As for Zelda, clearly their is a history of mental illness in her family, as he brother also had severe issues with his mental capacity. She continually runs up against the brick wall that is her husband. Who’s to say that a different husband wouldn’t have done the same?

On the flip side, Scott used Zelda as his muse for many of his stories. He took her letters, her life, their life together and turned it into fiction to win himself literary acclaim. For Zelda, she traveled the world and was able to explore her creativity. She learned from literal masters of their craft she likely never would’ve been exposed to had it not been for her marriage to Scott.

I don’t know if it’s our place to take sides in their marriage. Clearly all that mattered to the two of them is that they loved each other enough once not to completely abandon each other, no matter how many slights and hurtful words they said to each other. It seems they hung onto each other because of the deep love they had for each other once. It’s not our place to judge.

Because of that, I don’t have a rating for this book. If you’re interested in a fictional take on the adult life and times of Zelda Fitzgerald, give it a read.

Tag: marriage

TSM Book Club Book #30: How To Talk To A Widower by Jonathan Tropper

TSM Book Club Book #14: Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald by Therese Anne Fowler