Gatsby's Girl by Caroline Preston

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Preston reimagines the life of Ginevra King, F. Scott Fitzgerald's first love and the basis for many of his novel’s leading ladies - Daisy Buchanan (The Great Gatsby ), Isabelle Borge (This Side of Paradise ), and Josephine Perry (The Basil and Josephine Stories ). Fitzgerald meets Ginevra at a party in St. Paul, where she is visiting her boarding-school roommate. The two hit it off and correspond for eight months with only one meeting, until Ginevra looses interest. Ginevra is very self absorbed, vain and spoilt. She turns her attention to Bill Granger, a solid but boring man, whom she marries at only 18. Life with Bill and their two children is not the grand romance Ginevra envisioned, and as Fitzgerald's literary star rises, she wonders what life with him would have been like. When she finds herself depicted in his novels and stories, it is clear Scott has never stopped thinking about Ginevra either. This fictional Ginevra matures somewhat; the prose is enjoyable and richly imaginative. This would be a great companion to The Great Gatsby.



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