The Great Gatsby [film tie-in] - Softcover

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1447225929 ISBN 13: 9781447225928

Publisher: Picador, 2013

Synopsis

Official Film Edition including an interview with Baz Luhrmann

Jay Gatsby s parties are legendary. Night and day, the rich and beautiful descend upon his mansion to drink and to dance. For Nick Carraway, newly arrived on Long Island, the handsome, wealthy Gatsby seems to lead the perfect life. But beneath that shimmering facade Gatsby harbours an obsessive desire for the only thing he truly wants, but can never have.

The Great Gatsby is F. Scott Fitzgerald s masterpiece; a tragic love story played out in a world of dangerous illusion amidst the famous decadence of the roaring twenties.

The perfect companion to the DVD, Blu-ray and soundtrack of Baz Luhrmann's movie, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Carey Mulligan and Tobey Maguire.

About this title

Review

In 1922, F Scott Fitzgerald announced his decision to write "something new--something extraordinary and beautiful and simple, intricately patterned". That extraordinary, beautiful, intricately patterned and, above all, simple novel became The Great Gatsby, arguably Fitzgerald's finest work and certainly the book for which he is best known. A portrait of the Jazz Age in all of its decadence and excess, Gatsby captured the spirit of the author's generation and earned itself a permanent place in American mythology. Self-made, self-invented millionaire Jay Gatsby embodies some of Fitzgerald's--and his country's--most abiding obsessions: money, ambition, greed and the promise of new beginnings. "Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter--tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther... And one fine morning--" Gatsby's rise to glory and eventual fall from grace be comes a kind of cautionary tale about the American Dream.

It's also a love story, of sorts, the narrative of Gatsby's quixotic passion for Daisy Buchanan. The pair meet five years before the novel begins, when Daisy is a legendary young Louisville beauty and Gatsby an impoverished officer. They fall in love, but while Gatsby serves overseas, Daisy marries the brutal, bullying but extremely rich Tom Buchanan. After the war, Gatsby devotes himself blindly to the pursuit of wealth by whatever means--and to the pursuit of Daisy, which amounts to the same thing. "Her voice is full of money," Gatsby says admiringly, in one of the novel's more famous descriptions. His millions made, Gatsby buys a mansion across Long Island Sound from Daisy's patrician East Egg address, throws lavish parties and waits for her to appear. When s he does, events unfold with all the tragic inevitability of a Greek drama, with detached, cynical neighbour Nick Carraway acting as chorus throughout. Spare, elegantly plotted and written in crystalline prose, The Great Gatsby is as perfectly satisfying as the best kind of poem. Perry Freeman, Amazon.com

Review

"A classic, perhaps the supreme American novel"
--John Carey, Sunday Times

"Gin was the national drink and sex the national obsession"
--The New York Times

About this edition

• Publisher: Picador
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1447225929
• ISBN 13: 9781447225928
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256