The lives of certain artistic figures make for compelling fictional subjects, gaps in the official versions of their lives opening up what Liza Klaussmann aptly calls a “shadowland” of novelistic possibility. The members of the Bloomsbury Group, for example, or the bright young things who cavorted on the Côte d’Azur in the 1920s and 30s: Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Pablo Picasso, Cole Porter, and the “lost generation”.

It’s this latter crowd to whom Klaussman turns her attention in Villa America, taking the title from the name of the home of the wealthy American couple Gerald and Sara Murphy that was the setting for a steady stream of now infamous cocktail parties and drunken dinners.

Klaussmann isn’t the first novelist to turn her attention to the social and romantic entanglements of this cohort: many of her characters danced on the sidelines of Paula McLain’s The Paris Wife and Naomi Wood’s Mrs Hemingway; in turn, Hemingway and his first two wives make regular appearances in Klaussman’s tale. This isn’t the first time the Murphys have been written about, either: they’re said to have been the inspiration behind Nicole and Dick Diver in Fitzgerald’s Tender Is the Night, fame that’s since spawned biographies, and a memoir written by their daughter.

At points, Klaussman’s text reads like a who’s who of the period, names appear with the frequency of a list, and now notorious titbits – Zelda throwing herself off a parapet; Scott drunkenly brawling at Villa America – are ticked off one by one. But she entwines her fact and fiction with a smooth, near seamless stitch, and the end result makes for exhilarating and moving reading.

Villa America is published by Picador (£12.99). Click here to buy it for £9.99