Call me Zelda by Erika Robuck is
a moving story about Anna, a psychiatric nurse who becomes engrossed
in the lives and family of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald as she tries to
help Zelda with her emerging mental illnesses. It touches on many
elements including marriage inequality, family dynamics, friendship
and love as well as dementia. Anna’s role in Zelda and the
Fitzgerald’s life is ever changing and somehow, she has to learn to
heal their wounds while battling her own demons.
Robuck has done an excellent job of
educating the reader about the Fitzgeralds and their fame and
notoriety from its peak of the 1930’s to the late 1940’s. They
are depicted as artistically gifted while completely dysfunctional in
their marriage.
Zelda’s character is forced to deal
with her husband’s demands while trying to create a more mature
role instead of just Scott’s “flapper wife.” Unfortunately,
her unstable and overexcited mind can’t marry her independant thinking
with her reality of being married to Scott, whom she believes only
wants her to have an identity related to him.
At the core of the book
is the relationship of Zelda and Anna. They feed off of each
other in a very parasitic-host way. Zelda needs affirmations while
Anna needs a project to take her mind off of her own problems. Her
brother, Peter, warns her throughout the story to not get sucked into
the Fitzgerald’s madness but their cause is one she doesn’t want
to escape from, and she knows it.
I really felt for Zelda in this book as
much as she did to make those around her cringe, the reader is privy
to her softer moments as seen through Anna’s eyes. Her lucid
moments seem to make Anna’s day but her low points can make you
loathe her. I wondered why Anna would take the abuse but Robuck sets
up Anna in an compassionate light and it’s understandable why she
would wish to sublimate her own life for someone else’s.
My main gripe with this book is that
Anna is so obsessed with Zelda that there’s not much mention of
anything else. The time period being the 1930’s to the 1940’s
and so many other things were going on in the world. Prohibition gets
a mention only when related to the Fitzgerald’s. There is
reference to WWI and Anna serving as a nurse at the time. The later
parts of the book during 1948 and there’s really slight mentions of
WWII at all. The story is supposed to be based somewhat on reality
so a bit more world history (or any other history than the
Fitzgerald’s) would have been refreshing.
Also, Zelda’s psychoses is a huge
part of the book but aside from painting and writing, Anna doesn’t
really do much to help Zelda’s mental health. Again, she gets
sucked into their world and loses sight of what her main role is in
the household. She becomes more of a babysitter / confidant than a
healer.
Overall, I appreciated this book and the
literature lesson hidden in the story. It’s apparent that Robuck
has done her homework here and really researched her subjects to the
point that the book feels very autobiographical, rather than fiction.
Of course, she has had prior knowledge on her subjects. Her last
book, Hemingway’s Girl, revolves around Ernest Hemingway,
another famous writer of the 1920’s and 1930’s. Hemingway is
referenced several times in Zelda, as well.
I would recommend
this book to anyone interested in Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald and rate
this book a 3 / 5 stars.
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