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F Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) left Princeton University in 1917 to join the army. He is said to have epitomized the Jazz Age, which he himself defined as 'a generation grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken'. In 1920 he entered a traumatic marriage which was to influence much of his writing.
Again an author who has built up a more or less established market, and his non appearance (in book form) over a period of several years, has stimulated interest in this first full length work since the publication of THE GREAT GATSBY. A story of a psychiatrist, and of his lovely wife - a marriage, on the surface ideally happy, but eaten underneath by the insecurity of its basis, and the coils that riches have placed around the husband. Against a background of the Riviera, of Paris, of Switzerland and a mental sanitarium, the drama is played out. The comparison with PRIVATE WORLDS, which is inevitable, is not a sound one. The selling point of this book is the story itself, the almost morbid fascination of the lurking mystery, the deft shift of atmosphere from the gay nonchalance of the Riviera sands, to the horrors of the tragedy in a Paris hotel, and the final, and rather unexpected denouement. The psychological aspects are neither so sound nor so interesting as the Bottome book. This is for a less serious audience - though not the college crowd that drank in his early books. Not wholly satisfactory, in final analysis - but good reading. Headlined as the leading book on the publisher's list and sure of a good send-off. (Kirkus Reviews)
