yes, another zelda book, though "call me zelda" is not directly about zelda fitzgerald but told from the perspective of her fictional nurse, anna howard. the novel is set during zelda's time at phipps psychiatric clinic and though based on real incidents in zelda's life, it is about anna's life which was affected my zelda.
i came across the novel while googling about other zelda books so i didn't know anything about it until i read the first page. i have to admit that i was a little disappointed that the protagonist was nurse anna and not zelda. i am not a fan of fan fiction and this is kinda borderline fan fiction (though it did open my mind, i am going to give "the paris wife" a chance, though the fact that i found it for $1 was a huge factor as well). i guess it's more like historical fiction, but regardless of what you call it, i wasn't a fan. i found it overly sentimental, predictable and unimaginative.
at first i thought it was cute how anna was the one that suggested zelda write for the doctors and also sent off zelda's manuscript to scribner's (both which occurred in real life). however, other than that i didn't approve of anne's relationship with zelda. it was extremely unprofessional and she crossed a handful of lines that could have been detrimental to zelda's recovery. instead of being a nurse, anna turned into a sad schoolgirl trying her best to befriend the popular girl. i mean she told her parents the instant she could about zelda being institutionalized (isn't there some client confidentially thing?). she also became obsessed with zelda which was not healthy for either one of them.
and i hate to sound soulless but i felt that anna's missing-in-action husband and dead daughter was too cliché of a storyline. though we saw the world via anna's eyes we never got into the inner workings of her soul. i mean her husband and daughter were constantly brought up but simply as a way to know anna gave up on life but never complex enough to know what she truly struggled with it.
i also disliked how anna's life cleaned up so nicely. i mean really, her husband's best friend shows up and they fall in love, but wait her husband might have been found . . . but no he didn't, now she can marry his best friend and not feel like she is betraying him! all is well in the world.
last but not least, i absolutely abhorred anna's journey to find zelda's journals. i have no idea why the author decided to focus on these journals, i doubt it would have been a wish of the real zelda to have them back. i know real life zelda had issues with scott using them in his novels but wouldn't having them physically add to her anguish rather than relieve it? and then finding them in the basement of their connecticut home?!?! really???? again, way too tidy of an ending.
another issue i had was the use of the polaroid camera on anna's journey. she explained that her husband paid a fortune for it, but how could they afford that and not daily phone calls? in addition to that, i am sure the camera cost a lot but i can only imagine how much the film cost. the cost of film made me think that anna's scrapbook for zelda was extremely unlikely.
the only thing that did genuinely shocked and impressed me was that the author included zelda's death in the novel. but i will be judgey and say oh what a blessing that anna got the journals to zelda in enough time to give her peace before her death.
i hate to be a book snob but this was the worse of the zelda novels i have recently read. everything in the story cleaned up too nicely, i can't handle movies with the hollywood endings, and the same goes for my novels.
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