Sweet Fury

★★★★★★★★☆☆ 8/10

320 pages

What’s it about?

Lila Crayne is a famous actress who has just begun working on a feminist movie adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night. As the filming begins, Lila decides to work on her own demons and begins therapy with a new therapist, Jonah Gabriel.  But everyone has their secrets, and as Lila works through her demons, there are unexpected consequences.

What did it make me think about?

This novel is so tied to Tender is the Night that I kept wishing I was more familiar with that story.

Should I read it?

Well, here is another novel that plays with the idea that "we are the stories we tell ourselves." I found this to be an incredibly ambitious novel that worked on some levels and not so well on others. All the characters are flawed, and each has a different take on the same story. This is a twisty novel with so many perspectives it will keep you guessing. The author takes aim at both misogynistic males and grandstanding feminists. I am meeting to talk about it tomorrow and can't wait to hear all the tidbits I missed in this book- I am sure there are many. If you love a suspense-thriller, or if you love F. Scott Fitzgerald, then you will enjoy this book.

A passage I marked

"I think the mind has ways of shifting our memories without our ever knowing it.  Maybe it's a subconscious way of crafting our personal narrative to justify a sequence of events and let us make sense of our own story.  Maybe it's our way of editing and shaping the story we want to tell ourselves."