Another Side of Paradise

Summary (from the publisher): The author of the acclaimed international bestseller The Late, Lamented Molly Marx imaginatively brings to life the shocking affair of F. Scott Fitzgerald and his longtime lover, Sheilah Graham, in this dazzling novel of romance, celebrity, and Gatsby-esque self-creation in 1930s Hollywood

In 1937 Hollywood, gossip columnist Sheilah Graham’s star is on the rise, while literary wonder boy F. Scott Fitzgerald’s career is slowly drowning in booze. But the once-famous author, desperate to make money penning scripts for the silver screen, is charismatic enough to attract the gorgeous Miss Graham, a woman who exposes the secrets of others while carefully guarding her own. Like Scott’s hero Jay Gatsby, Graham has meticulously constructed a life far removed from the poverty of her childhood in London’s slums. And like Gatsby, the onetime guttersnipe learned early how to use her charms to become a hardworking success feted and feared by both the movie studios and their luminaries.

A notorious drunk famously married to the doomed “crazy Zelda,” Fitzgerald fell hard for his “Shielah” (he never learned to spell her name), a shrewd yet soft-hearted woman—both a fool for love and nobody’s fool—who would stay with him and help revive his career until his tragic death three years later. Working from diaries and other primary sources from the time, Sally Koslow revisits their scandalous love affair, bringing Graham and Scott gloriously alive in this compelling page-turner saturated with the color, glitter, magic, and passion of 1930s Hollywood and Sheilah’s dramatic transformation in London.  

 

Review: I received an uncorrected proof copy of this novel from HarperCollins.

 

This novel tells the story of the true life romance between gossip columnist Sheilah Graham and author F. Scott Fitzgerald. It is the 1930s in Hollywood and Sheilah Graham is a self made woman who has risen up from a childhood of extreme poverty in London's slums. Sheilah is living a life of glamor far removed from her past when she meets and falls in love with Scott, who by that point in his life is a notorious drunk with a fading career and a wife in an asylum. Despite their circumstances, Sheilah and Scott are devoted to one another and Sheilah becomes the last love story of Scott's life.

 

Before reading this book, I knew very little about Sheilah Graham and her romance with F. Scott Fitzgerald and I enjoyed learning about her life through Koslow's clearly well researched book. I especially enjoyed the chapters where the author has imagined what Sheilah's childhood in the Jewish orphanage and the slums of London might have been like. Although the book does not spend much time dwelling on Sheilah's work and rise to prominence in Hollywood, it was fascinating to watch her rise over the course of the novel through hard work and making connections with the right people. And it emphasizes her deep love for Scott seeing her toss away a prominent engagement for a author who was seen as washed up and past his prime.

 

However, there was nothing particularly revolutionary about this novel, which was a fairly straightforward fictionalized account of Sheilah's life. I would have liked to have learned a little more about Sheilah's professional life once she moved to America, since that is the one area of her life that was largely skipped over and just referred to throughout. I also found the ending unsatisfactory, hinting that Sheilah's interference with Scott's wife led to his death but never revealing what Zelda's letter said. The book also implies that Sheilah and Scott might have a child together, which born up by Sheilah's actual biography. And although this novel was ultimately about their love story, after following Sheilah from her childhood to meeting Scott, I felt robbed of the conclusion of her story after Scott's death.

 

Stars: 3