There is always a certain charm existing in novels that take place during this era. The first notions of stripping away puritanical ideals, reveling in the Jazz Age, freedom to drink, freedom to have sex (as one so chooses), freedom to make art and let art be your calling.
It's idealized, certainly, an existence of the wealthier set, but there is truth to this historically based novel Villa America, taking place on the French Riviera in the home of Sara and Gerald Murphy, American expats who welcomed the likes of Hemingway, the Fitzgeralds, and Picasso into their home.
Sara is motherly and wise, and charming and beautiful and all these wonderful things. Gerald longs for something, and this novel assumes that something is a repressed sexuality, but I'm not quite certain if there is any historical evidence for this notion. However, it's a good, albeit possibly needlessly dramatized story of the 1920s and these amazing people that populated that era.
The author acknowledges it is very much fiction, so we can forgive that. There's a value to this, if you are a fan of The Great Gatsby and the riotous fakeness of it all, the temporal beauty fueled by alcohol and obsession, the players in the story knowing how fleeting, how fictitious, this crazy existence is and living it more loudly and vibrantly for it.
This book is that. A story of a time, of an era. Makes you want to go back and consider the Lost Generation all over again, outside of the context of high school requirements. And Jebus, look how beautiful it all was:
(*ARC received free via Shelf Awareness for review.)
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| Gerald and Sara Murphy. (from The New Yorker) |
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| Zelda Fitzgerald |
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