synopsis:

Set amid golf course, country clubs, and big houses where flappers dance at cotillions, the short stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald brilliantly portray the Jazz Age as seen by the 'smart set'.

From the fun of 'Myra Meets His Family', in which a husband-hunting beauty has a dirty trick played on her, to the superb 'Bernice Bobs Her Hair', where a country debutante gets remade and betrayed by a sophisticated cousin, this is witty, cynical writing about extravagant living and daring times. But here, too, is an undercurrent of unhappiness and unease, lost ideas, and "new" women in a world that allows them love affairs, liquor, and short skirts, but nonetheless requires them to focus on finding wealthy husbands. the story 'bernice bobs her hair' therefore addresses the way people have to fit in society and how hard it is to 'be yourself'.

Still sparkling and fresh, these tales of class, money, and social mores are quintessential Fitzgerald.

on this book:

All the works in this collection come from fitzgerald's first year as a professional writer. It was 1919; Fitzgerald was 22 and he published these stories in The Saturday Evening Post and elsewhere.