Vicky Kavanagh - Love, Zelda

I have always loved reading biographies. I was, and continue to be, fascinated by the lives of other people. I first learned of Zelda Fitzgerald by reading a biography of her husband, F Scott Fitzgerald. Zelda, credited as being Scotts muse and the original flapper, stirred intrigue in me long after I finished that biography.

I dove into books exploring her and Scotts relationship and the more I learned, the more I realised how involved Zelda had been in her husbands writing and what a great injustice history had served to her. Over the years since her death, Zeldas character has been torn to shreds and dismissed as insane. Even when she was alive, men like Ernest Hemingway and unfortunately, her own husband, did much to damage her reputation as an impediment to Scotts writing.

But what history hasnt portrayed is how much of that work would not have existed without her to begin with. Aside from her editing and being a constant support of Scott, he took large passages of prose from her letters, diaries and other written work. Scott was the suffocating presence of Zeldas adult life; a physical conflict against any independence or artistic accomplishment she strived to achieve.

The more I read about Zelda and got to know her reading letters she sent to her loved ones, her various pieces of writing that she crafted during her youth, her book and the artwork she completed in her later years the more urgent it seemed to tell her story. Zelda was not perfect. She could be selfish and childish and impulsive. But she was also exceedingly kindhearted, creative, gifted and loving. She struggled against the social conventions of her time and longed for recognition outside of her role as a wife and a mother. In this way, she was a visionary. She wished to exist on her own terms, create art that would live on after she had died and have no regrets about her life.

It is a tragedy that Zelda never had the opportunity to provide her truth in full, unvarnished. While other books have attempted to give her a voice, many of them ignore the final decade of her life. They stop once Scott dies; even though much of Zeldas artwork was created in the intervening years before her own death. Once again, Zeldas story was viewed only in conjunction with her husbands.

With Love, Zelda I have relied on letters written by both Fitzgeralds, numerous biographies (which are listed in the acknowledgements) and Zeldas own work to craft a voice that I believe represents her. All factual, geographical information and timelines were intensely researched and verified by multiple sources. The dialogue is of course, imaginative, but based on research to create authentic voices for the people portrayed.

And so I hope, that with this book, Zelda Fitzgerald gets the voice she was so often denied not only in life but more often than not in death as well.