F. Scott Fitzgerald
4 books
- Young Fitzgerald selling to the magazines, so the surface glitters, but Bernice Bobs Her Hair and The Ice Palace already have the ache under the party. Quick, funny stories that turn out sadder than they first look.
- Anthony and Gloria are gorgeous, lazy, and quietly rotting while they wait for his grandfather's money, and Fitzgerald makes you watch every gin-soaked afternoon of it. Slower and meaner than Gatsby, but if you like beautiful sentences about people ruining themselves, it lingers.
- You watch Gatsby stare at that green light across the bay and slowly realize the whole glittering party is built on wanting one thing he can't have. It's short, sad, and gorgeous sentence by sentence, best read in a couple of quiet sittings.
- You get Amory Blaine in all his charm, vanity, hunger, and confusion, stumbling through Princeton, romance, and the aftermath of war. The novel is uneven and sometimes wonderfully overstuffed, but its quick shifts in voice capture what it feels like to outgrow the person you thought you’d become.