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The Great Gatsby

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The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

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By F. Scott Fitzgerald

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13 reviews

In this novel Jay Gatsby’s destructive passion for Daisy Buchanan is played out against the background of Long Island high society. Viewed through the eyes of an outsider, Gatsby’s life is the story of a generation – glitz and glamour turning sour, and the high life turning to ashes.

Reviews

21 Jul 2021

It is a very well written novela. I enjoyed reading because it made me travelled back in time to the New York of the 1920s.

I highly recommend it!

08 Jul 2021

A must read! Fitzgerald paints the perfect picture of the excesses of the 1920’s Jazz age whilst weaving an incredibly moving love story. This novel is both hopeful and heart-breaking. I fall more in love with it with every read.

22 Jun 2021

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Instead of the Great American novel we expected from our second virtual reading group choice The Great Gatsby we were all left feeling rather underwhelmed and pondering why it ever became a classic.

We expected to be able to escape from current events into the glitz and glamour of 1920s Long Island but the lavish parties, excess, self-interest and lack of redeeming qualities in any of the characters jarred with us all. Ironically we had most sympathy with Jay Gatsby despite his lies, manipulations and absence of morals.

The novel wasn’t a success when first published but we felt that the romanticism of this period of American history, film adaptations and education use have helped to maintain its popularity. Whilst the storyline works we felt the language was overblown but interspersed by a few gems. Maybe we are biased but felt the novel doesn’t compare well to some of our English classic novels and the era is better portrayed by other U.S. authors.

Many of us had seen at least one film version so were looking forward to reading the novel but it speaks volumes that we all agreed we were glad the novel wasn’t any longer!

16 Jun 2021

Not for me. It was a book gifted to students in my first year of university and it's taken me 6 years to get around to read it! Sadly wasn't worth the wait, the story just seems to flit about and just didn't flow well, making it hard to follow. The big events seemed to get overlooked with a lot of the book talking about less important parts of the story in my opinion.

08 Jun 2020

I enjoyed the intrigue but i'm afraid it wasn't for me.

29 Aug 2016

This is a great book for children around my age (11),as it has loads of more sophisticated words which will help them in their further reading.

16 Apr 2015

I thought it was an interesting book, but t took some time before I started to like it (about half way through).
The person who I like best must be Nick the Narrator, as he sees it all and without him I wouldn't understand anything happening as he explains it all.
I would recommend someone else to read this especially if they wanted to do an essay.

29 Mar 2015

A little hard to get into, but once I dived in enjoyed it tremendously! Gatsby a true gentleman & Daisy/Tom shallow & rotten to the core! The film very faithful to the novel which was refreshing. Definitely a classic!

15 Mar 2015

It was a really hard book to get in to until I had gotten to Chapter 4 but I managed to continue reading. It was quite dry to begin with and still was later on but the ending was powerful and really quite well concluded, would recommend this book and it was overall a well put together book with a powerful idea and set of themes behind it!

27 Feb 2015

A mysterious story. I still feel like the character Gatsby did not get his true ending. F.Scott Fitzgerald displayed that not everything in life has its desired consequent. However the portrayal of aristocrats shows that their egos are affected by their status in society and that not even money itself can make you as happy as you'd think you could be.

17 Jan 2015

Beautifully written classic. Glamorous yet devastating. Charming and elegant

29 Aug 2014

It's a classic!

13 Aug 2014

interesting...

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