Author Archives: SJW

The A.V. Club’s Best Books of 2015: West of Sunset

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West of Sunset was named as one of the best books of 2015 by the A.V. Club!

Here’s the full text:

Lists of best books tend to lean toward the ones that set out to be masterpieces, works of staggering ambition or untold history or great stylistic risk. That’s understandable, but there’s something to be said for the simple pleasure of a good story told well, and by that score, Stewart O’Nan’s West Of Sunset is one of the most purely enjoyable novels of the year. The book is a candid but forgiving look at F. Scott Fitzgerald’s lost years in Hollywood, where one of America’s best writers found himself sinking in a quicksand of booze and glamour, his triumphs far behind him. Those who ache for the Art Deco era will find it irresistible, but even Gatsby virgins will find it as captivating as a bottle of champagne, with O’Nan providing the fizz and Fitzgerald the hangover. [Ryan Vlastelica]

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Washington Post’s Notable Fiction Books of 2015

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West of Sunset was chosen as one of the Notable Fiction Books of 2015 by the Washington Post!  Here’s what they said about it:

O’Nan compassionately and beautifully evokes the grim last act of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s life, when he worked as a Hollywood screenwriter. Sick with alcoholism and tuberculosis, he labored to make flimsy scripts better, a tired but relentless craftsman. — Maureen Corrigan

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Reminder – 10/10/2015: F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Festival

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A reminder that Stewart will be at the 19th Annual F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Festival!  He’s the Keynote Speaker and will be on a variety of panels.

[schedule]

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Also, on Friday 10/9/2015, there will be Readings in Tribute to Richard Ford — “Four distinguished contemporary fiction writers will read selections from their work as their tribute to Fitzgerald Award honoree Richard Ford.”  The lineup:

 

Robert Olen Butler
Jeffrey Eugenides
Howard Norman
Susan Shreve

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West of Sunset in the News

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The Guardian

West of Sunset by Stewart O’Nan review – a fine fictional F Scott Fitzgerald

Sadness, estrangement and promise mark the last three years of the Great Gatsby author’s life as a helpless Hollywood hack

O’Nan imagines the last three years of Fitzgerald’s life, from 1937 to 1940, less as a second act than an intermission; a moment of uncertainty, in which the familiar scenery disappeared. West of Sunset captures the sadness of such moments, but also their promise: as its second epigraph states, “nothing was impossible – everything was just beginning.”

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Yorkshire Post

The gossip columnist who made Hollywood

“Few people who grew up against that kind of backdrop in the early 20th century ever escaped poverty, but Sheilah was a pretty incredible woman,” says American author Stewart O’Nan, whose latest novel West of Sunset is a fictionalised account of the last three years of the life of F Scott Fitzgerald when he lived with Graham.

“Her first job as a teenager was in a department store, but she had her sights set on much bigger things and became a music hall dancer. It gave her a taste of the entertainment business and before she left for America she had also begun writing a column for the Daily Express.”

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