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F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic The Great Gatsby centers on the fatal allure of Daisy Buchanan, whom the author immortalized as a flapper Helen of Troy, heedlessly drawing men to their doom.
In her new novel, Gatsby's Girl, Caroline Preston examines the real-life inspiration for Buchanan and other Fitzgerald femmes fatales.
Ginerva King was a 16-year-old boarding school siren from a rich Chicago family whom Fitzgerald, then a Princeton sophomore, considered his first love.
Preston wants to illustrate how literature uses flawed reality to generate lasting art. Ginerva was also the basis for Isabelle Borge in This Side of Paradise, the 1920 debut novel that made Fitzgerald a Jazz Age literary superstar before he crashed into despair, alcoholism, financial woes and death at 44.
Preston presents Ginerva as an early-20th-century variation on Paris Hilton, an heiress with a naughty reputation. The author captures this self-absorbed Lolita's voice. Despite her youth, Ginerva already has a Ph.D. in man management and sex-kitten allure.
All men, beginning with Daddy, indulge this lovely creature. At 15, she has already driven one smitten college suitor over the edge. It was their secret and scandalous engagement that results in Ginerva being sent to boarding school, where her roommate introduces her to Fitzgerald, whom she knows from St. Paul. Smitten, Fitzgerald writes reams of passionate letters to Ginerva and comes to visit her in her palatial Lake Forest home.
Of course, he's a non-starter for Ginerva's hand. He's not rich, he drinks too much and he's obsessive about Ginerva. She is a muse, not a real girl, in his besotted eyes.
The novel gets off to a slow start because Ginerva's early narration is what you'd expect from a man magnet who's been told how pretty she is "far too often for my own good." Letters flow. Then she dumps him.
After the breakup, the novel picks up as Ginerva's beauty fades. There is a hasty marriage, kids, boredom, adultery, despair, divorce, a new beginning.
All the while, Ginerva keeps track of Fitzgerald. The two old flames meet in Hollywood as deeply damaged middle-aged people. Preston hews to the official line on Fitzgerald: great writer, bad drunk prone to self-pity.
Ironically, Ginerva ends her days evading the growing horde of Fitzgerald biographers. If Gatsby's Girl has a message, it's that being a handmaiden to someone else's genius ain't that great.
Gatsby's Girl
By Caroline Preston
Houghton Mifflin, 312 pp., $24
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