On Booze by F Scott Fitzgerald (From The Northern Echo)

Book Review: On Booze by F Scott Fitzgerald (Picador, £9.99)

4:14pm Monday 9th January 2012 in Non-Fiction

THIS slim hardback gathers up sketches and fragments from letters and memoirs inspired by the American writer’s life-long affair with alcohol.

We get glamorous glimpses of travels through Europe as F Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda dip in and out of expensive hotels and cheap bars in search of the next party.

Best of all is a love letter to the bright lights of the New York of his youth before he found fame as the man who gave the world The Great Gatsby.

But all the sparkling prose comes with a big twist of melancholy as he starts to regret the days spent looking at the world through the bottom of a glass and wonders what might have been.