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The Beautiful and the Damned

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The Beautiful and the Damned

By: F. Scott Fitzgerald
Narrated by: William Dufris
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About this listen

 F. Scott Fitzgerald's second novel, The Beautiful and the Damned, "marks an advance over This Side of Paradise," Edmund Wilson wrote. "The style is more nearly mature and the subject more nearly unified, and there are scenes that are more convincing than any in his previous fiction."

Published in 1922, it chronicles the relationship of Anthony Patch, Harvard-educated aspiring aesthete, and his beautiful wife, Gloria, as they wait to inherit his grandfather's fortune. A devastating satire of the nouveaux rich and New York's nightlife, of reckless ambition and squandered talent, it is also a shattering portrait of a marriage fueled by alcohol and wasted by wealth. The Beautiful and the Damned, Fitzgerald wrote to Zelda in 1930, "was all true."

Lyrical, romantic, yet cruelly incisive, it signaled a new stage in Fitzgerald's career. With The Beautiful and the Damned, H.L. Mencken commented in The Smart Set, "Fitzgerald ceases to be a wunderkind, and begins to come into his maturity.

(P)2000 Blackstone Audiobooks, All Rights Reserved Classics Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Marriage Witty
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The characters created are brilliantly realised and although narrated a bit fast, you are drawn in. The life of society people in New York is portrayed in its wit and pseudo profundity. Then it all goes wrong.

The Decline and Fall of Anthony Patch

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With 100 years gone by since published first, this novel hasn’t lost its grip. Without little effort to be transferred to the 21st century.

Worth every moment listening to

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Wonderful story, wonderfully read and performed, Absolutely gripping towards the end. A great comment on wealthy socialites and a thoughtful description of the ofttimes shallowness of the wealthy.

Authentic and convincing performance

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An exquisitely sad, precise and wistful evocation of a bygone age, both elegant and ugly at the same time in its depiction of the damage human beings can do to each other (and themselves) in the pursuit of their feelings of entitlement to love, wealth and happiness.

Jazz Age Classic

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What a horrible and annoying way of narrating female parts of the dialogue. Don’t think I can tolerate it enough to finish listening to this book.

Couldn’t finish because of the narrator

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