Save Me the Waltz by Zelda Fitzgerald: book review

Save Me the Waltz (1932, this edition 2018) is set from 1920-1930 in America and France in the Jazz Age. It is the only novel that Zelda Fitzgerald wrote. She was the wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald (author of the 1925 novel, The Great Gatsby). She wrote it at the time when F. Scott was writing Tender is the Night (1934).

This autobiographical novel is a reflection of Zelda’s love of dancing and her state of mind during the heady times of jazz, flappers, and all things in excess. It also imitates the life of Lucia Joyce, James Joyce’s daughter who was living in Paris at the same time. Zelda was seven years older than Lucia, and they both dreamed of becoming famous dancers. Their dreams, and living in famous families, threatened their mental health.

The novel begins in America during World War I, with young Southern belle Alabama Beggs enjoying the beginning of her adulthood—with wild parties and a great deal of dancing. She meets and marries an officer and artist, David Knight, and they move to New York.

From New York, they travel to Paris to live. In Paris, Alabama’s passion for dancing is heightened. She goes to ballet classes every day, aiming to become a professional, and famous, dancer. She struggles to aspire to fame and being recognized, in her own right, as an individual artist, away from the shadow of her husband.

This is the feminist version of the Gatsby, and an insight into the lives of women in the 1920s seeking their own passions and dreams. It’s quite interesting to follow the life of the character Alabama with the life of Zelda, different but the same.

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of: Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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