West of Sunset

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A rich, sometimes heartbreaking (Dennis Lehane) novel of F. Scott Fitzgerald s last years in Hollywood Look out for City of Secrets coming from Viking on April 26, 2016 In 1937, F. Scott Fitzgerald was a troubled, uncertain man whose literary success was long over. In poor health, with his wife consigned to a mental asylum and his finances in ruins, he struggled to make a new start as a screenwriter in Hollywood. By December 1940, he would be dead of a heart attack. Those last three years of Fitzgerald s life, often obscured by the legend of his earlier Jazz Age glamour, are the focus of Stewart O Nan s gorgeously and gracefully written novel. With flashbacks to key moments from Fitzgerald s past, the story follows him as he arrives on the MGM lot, falls in love with brassy gossip columnist Sheilah Graham, begins work on The Last Tycoon, and tries to maintain a semblance of family life with the absent Zelda and daughter, Scottie. Fitzgerald s orbit of literary fame and the Golden Age of Hollywood is brought vividly to life through the novel s romantic cast of characters, from Dorothy Parker and Ernest Hemingway to Humphrey Bogart. A sympathetic and deeply personal portrait of a flawed man who never gave up in the end, even as his every wish and hope seemed thwarted, West of Sunset confirms O Nan as possibly our best working novelist (Salon). "