Flapper

A Madcap Story of Sex, Style, Celebrity, and the Women Who Made America Modern

By: Joshua Zeitz

Narrated by: Daniella Rabbani

Blithely flinging aside the Victorian manners that kept her disapproving mother corseted, the New Woman of the 1920's puffed cigarettes, snuck gin, hiked her hemlines, danced the Charleston, and necked in roadsters. More important, she earned her own keep, controlled her own destiny, and secured liberties that modern women take for granted. Her newfound freedom heralded a radical change in American culture. Whisking us from the Alabama country club where Zelda Sayre first caught the eye of F. Scott Fitzgerald to Muncie, Indiana, where would-be flappers begged their mothers for silk stockings, to the Manhattan speakeasies where patrons partied till daybreak, historian Joshua Zeitz brings the era to exhilarating life.

This is the story of America’s first sexual revolution, its first merchants of cool, its first celebrities, and its most sparkling advertisement for the right to pursue happiness. The men and women who made the flapper were a diverse lot. There was Coco Chanel, the French orphan who redefined the feminine form and silhouette, helping to free women from the torturous corsets and crinolines that had served as tools of social control. In California, where orange groves gave way to studio lots and fairytale mansions, three of America’s first celebrities - Clara Bow, Colleen Moore, and Louise Brooks - Hollywood’s great flapper triumvirate - fired the imaginations of millions of filmgoers. Towering above all were Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald, whose swift ascent and spectacular fall embodied the glamour and excess of the era that would come to an abrupt end on Black Tuesday, when the stock market collapsed and rendered the age of abundance and frivolity instantly obsolete.

With its heady cocktail of storytelling and big ideas, Flapper is a dazzling look at the women who launched the first truly modern decade.

©2006 Jushua Zeitz (P)2013 Audible, Inc.

B+ Good Value & Good Read/Listen

What did you like best about Flapper? What did you like least?

Readability and adaptability (whispersync). Narration was flat.

What did you like best about this story?

I love that this title includes whispersync. Keeping up with my place across devices is a wonderful addition to the literary experience. The author intertwines the personal relationships between F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda Sayer with trinkets of facts wrapped up in a fictionesque coating. It's very readable.

How could the performance have been better?

The reader seems to have only two tones of voice, straight and quoting. Its difficulty to determine the appropriate tone in many of the quoted bits because of the inflection given the by the latter. The reader seems too slow at times and too flirty when quoting. For some parts, the flirtatiousness is appropriate; but its a constant for anything italicized or quoted throughout the work.

If this book were a movie would you go see it?

Why? Who's directing?

really interesting and informative!

The narrator read well-enough, but I got really tired of her verbal exclamation points. I highly doubt Mr. Ford! spoke! in a high-pitched!, Excite!-ed! VOI-CE!! Really well-written, though and quite interesting!

Very informative and a good read, however

Good research went into it, however at some points it felt rushed or like it had poor organization to it. But I would recommend it cause I did enjoy learning about the topic.

Interesting facts, but the narrator...

Would you try another book from Joshua Zeitz and/or Daniella Rabbani?

The book itself is interesting and I would definitely read another by this author. However, I would avoid this reader as her timing and inflection are downright bizarre! I would have to say passages back to myself to fully understand what the writer was trying to say. If you like lots of ...'s in your narration, then this is the narrator for you.

Who was your favorite character and why?

There wasn't exactly a central character in this book, since it's more a commentary on era, but I did enjoy learning about Colleen Moore and Lois Long.

Who would you have cast as narrator instead of Daniella Rabbani?

Bernadette Dunne

Was Flapper worth the listening time?

Yes - very educational about many aspects of the twenties and the years leading up to that decade.

Good Book, Poor Performance

If you could sum up Flapper in three words, what would they be?

Interesting book but...

What was one of the most memorable moments of Flapper?

Much good information about the Jazz age, Zeitz writes in an interesting way that keeps the reader engaged.

Would you be willing to try another one of Daniella Rabbani’s performances?

Absolutely not. Rabbani made an interesting topic almost unbearable.

Any additional comments?

An interesting book, certainly worth reading THE PRINT VERSION. However, the narrator reads the book as if she's auditioning for a role on a soap opera. In a non-fiction book it is good to have a narrator breathe some life into the quotes of the people being written about. But Rabbani gives such a melodramatic reading to even the narrative portions that it is distracting and annoying. She sounds at various points of the narrative like a gossip columnist dishing the latest dirt, a stereotypical 80's valley girl from a bad movie, and a grade school teacher trying desperately to engage her disinterested students. Her reading style might suit a kids' fairies book, but it doesn't suit non-fiction.

To be fair, she does settle down a bit after about the 3rd hour, as if someone listened to the tapes and told her to tone it down, but by then the melodrama (which gets so out of hand at times that Rabbani stumbles over phrasing) and mispronunciations (including but not limited to such as "indigNITTY" for "indignity," "jew-ler-ry" for "jewelry," and the four-syllable version of "mischievous" with the extra "eee" sound), make it all a chore to slog through. As I said above, definitely worth READING the book, but do yourself a favor and skip the audiobook.