From The Bookseller, a quick review of West of Sunset — an Editor’s Choice pick!
Category Archives: News
West of Sunset on the L.A. Times Bestseller List for 5th Week!
Still holding strong at #18!
Review of West of Sunset in The New Yorker
Briefly Noted
WEST OF SUNSET, by Stewart O’Nan (Viking). This novel of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s last years tracks him as he hacks away at Hollywood screenplays, perpetually menaced by poor health, poor finances, and a sense of his rusting legacy. Drowning in memories of a world “all promise and sweet fumbling,” Scott struggles not to disappoint his teen-age daughter, falls for a mysterious gossip columnist, and visits the institutionalized, tragically unstable Zelda. The narration wanders between wistful elegy and snappy one-liners delivered by, among others, Ernest Hemingway, Humphrey Bogart, and Shirley Temple. O’Nan’s adroitness with atmosphere and period detail makes Fitzgerald’s dreams of creating worthy work, even with his best days behind him, absorbing and poignant.
12 Authors Who Make Food Sound Delicious
There are plenty of food and cooking memoirs available, as well as novel-recipe book hybrids, like Nora Ephron’s Heartburn. But the following bodies of work by this group of authors ostensibly have nothing to do with food; they sneakily suck you in with their captivating plots while secretly pushing a foodie agenda. And it works.
One of Stewart O’Nan’s classic moves is writing long passages that show his characters performing quotidian tasks in excruciating detail, usually while in the midst of a tragic or upsetting event.
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Pittsburgh City Paper – Stuff We Like
Here’s what the Pittsburgh City Paper said about West of Sunset:
Pittsburgh-based novelist Stewart O’Nan ventures into historical fiction with this portrait of F. Scott Fitzgerald, spending his final days in late-1930s Hollywood, hobnobbing with stars, falling in love and trying to write his way out of debt. It’s wonderfully entertaining and insightfully poignant.
The Works of Stewart O'Nan 