The Beautiful and the Damned, F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Beautiful and the Damned, F. Scott Fitzgerald
10 Rating(s)
List: $17.98 | Sale: $12.59
Club: $8.99

The Beautiful and the Damned

Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald

Narrator: Don Hagen

Unabridged: 14 hr 38 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Ascent Audio

Published: 09/13/2010

Categories: Fiction, Classic


Synopsis

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s second novel is a cautionary tale of reckless ambition and squandered talent set amid the glitter of Jazz-Age New York.

The novel tells the story of Anthony Patch (a 1920s socialite and presumptive heir to a tycoon's fortune), the relationship with his wife Gloria, his service in the army, and alcoholism.

At once a morality tale, a meditation on love, money and decadence, and a social document, the novel provides an excellent portrait of the Eastern elite as the Jazz Age begins its ascent, engulfing all classes into what will soon be known as Café Society. As with his other novels, it is a brilliant character study and an early account of the complexities of marriage and intimacy, believed to be largely based on Fitzgerald's relationship and marriage with Zelda Fitzgerald.

About F. Scott Fitzgerald

F. Scott Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1896. He attended Princeton University, joined the United States Army during World War I, and published his first novel, This Side of Paradise, in 1920. That same year he married Zelda Sayre and for the next decade the couple lived in New York, Paris, and on the Riviera. Fitzgerald's masterpieces include The Beautiful and the Damned, The Great Gatsby, and Tender Is the Night. He died at the age of forty-four while working on The Last Tycoon. Fitzgerald's fiction has secured his reputation as one of the most important American writers of the twentieth century.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Vit on April 12, 2024

F. Scott Fitzgerald is a brilliant stylist… He is full of wicked irony and he depicts his hero or his fictional alter ego as an ironic young man… As you first see him he wonders frequently whether he is not without honor and slightly mad, a shameful and obscene thinness glistening on the surface of t......more

Goodreads review by Brian on May 31, 2011

A deeply flawed book. A good amount of editing would've greatly improved this book. However, Fitzgerald was coming off his huge success with "This Side of Paradise", so the publisher allowed him to publish this very uneven piece of work. This was the final Fitzgerald novel that I have read, and by f......more

Goodreads review by Lisa of Troy on December 22, 2024

Listen carefully. Lean in. The title is “The Beautiful and Damned.” It is not “The Beautiful and The Damned.” The distinction is subtle but meaningful. Fitzgerald’s second novel, The Beautiful and Damned, obsessively haunts, infiltrating thoughts when least suspected. Ironically, Fitzgerald hated this......more