Paradise Lost

Narrator David Colacci's voice is always sonorous, but the energy and verve he normally brings when reading fiction seems absent in this biography of noted American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. The author's reputation has waxed and waned over the decades, and Brown's biography is the latest attempt to set his life and work in a historical context. Fitzgerald lived a remarkable, if short and frequently unhappy, life. He published his first novel at the age of 23 as the nation entered the Jazz Age (a name he coined) and eventually succumbed to alcoholism at the age of 44 in 1940. Brown's comprehensive biography gives a lot of attention to the author's complicated relationship with his wife, Zelda. Colacci's narration is too languid, doing little to enliven the text. D.B. � AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine