Review: Even with concessions made for it being his first novel . . .
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 05 30, 2014
. . . it's still weak.  After reading (and loving)The Beautiful and Damned, I thought I'd dip back into Fitzgerald's work and read this.  I wish I'd moved forward instead of backward.  While there are glimmers of the brilliance he'd later show, this book is formless, vague, and wonky (for example:  some of the sections with dialogue are written as if they're a play, leaving you to imagine everything else about the scene, while others are written conventionally).  Amory Blaine was a potentially great character, but he just dies under the weight of the novel and the meandering plot.