Ratings:
Star Rating: ★★☆☆☆
If This Book Was a Movie Rating: R
Review:
i’m losing faith in humanity. we had the story of the Great Gatsby set up as a murder mystery from the perspectives of the women.
and yet we still managed to screw it over 👏
let’s just get started with this glorious premise full of false hope because why not.
note: spoilers for Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.
“On a sultry August day in 1922, Jay Gatsby is shot dead in his West Egg swimming pool. To the police, it appears to be an open-and-shut case of murder/suicide when the body of George Wilson, a local mechanic, is found in the woods nearby.
Then a diamond hairpin is discovered in the bushes by the pool, and three women fall under suspicion. Each holds a key that can unlock the truth to the mysterious life and death of this enigmatic millionaire.
Daisy Buchanan once thought she might marry Gatsby—before her family was torn apart by an unspeakable tragedy that sent her into the arms of the philandering Tom Buchanan.
Jordan Baker, Daisy’s best friend, guards a secret that derailed her promising golf career and threatens to ruin her friendship with Daisy as well.
Catherine McCoy, a suffragette, fights for women’s freedom and independence, and especially for her sister, Myrtle Wilson, who’s trapped in a terrible marriage.
Their stories unfold in the years leading up to that fateful summer of 1922, when all three of their lives are on the brink of unraveling. Each woman is pulled deeper into Jay Gatsby’s romantic obsession, with devastating consequences for all of them.”
SEE ISN’T THAT SUCH A GOOD PREMISE?!
how could it have gone so wrong *cries*
So I think I’m just gonna break my traditional review structure and mash everything together because anyone who’s read the Great Gatsby knows these characters, and it takes away from the mystery if I say too much about the plot.
SO HERE WE GO:
As much as I absolutely admired Fitzgerald’s original Great Gatsby, the women never really got a voice. Everything was told through Nick’s perspective, and the main focus was on Jay Gatsby. Daisy and Myrtle were constantly sexualized, and Jordan and Catherine were constantly dismissed.
So in that respect, I love how this book gives those women agency, showing how Daisy, Jordan, and Catherine each have their own struggles and joys and traumas and past and life.
However, with that being said, I really didn’t like how the characterizations swung to extremes. In the original, all the women were desired and objectified. In this version, all the men were flat and villainized.
Case in point: throughout the story, there are eight named men with roles of varying importance.
and interestingly, EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM WAS A LUSTFUL SELFISH MANIPULATOR.
like I know there are a lot of wicked men in the world, but not ALL of them are trash, and certainly not all of them struggle with being lustful selfish manipulators.
like if we’re gonna have trash, let’s at least have some variety 🙄
The most annoying thing about this villainization was that it made all the men cardboard flat. They had no lives outside of being jerks to the MCs. It ruined any sense of mystery or intrigue and certainly destroyed any of my desire to learn more about any of them.
I mean, I was bloody curious about Tom Buchanan’s childhood in the original, and for like 98% of this book I was just like OMIGOSH LOCK THIS PERVERT UP.
I’ve always loved trying to imagine the stories behind all the Great Gatsby characters. If you think about it, they were all mysteries. Nick was the plainest and least involved with their drama, and that’s why he made such a good narrator. Just like us, he came into this world of wealth and power and wine without any backstory. Everyone was a mystery. Their power plays, their sins, their loves, we didn’t know any of it.
But in this one, the women had all their stories laid out, and the men were so hecking obvious that any subtlety was yeeted in .02193 seconds.
In the end, I didn’t bloody care about any of the plot or any of the characters.
and as we readers all know, being dead boring is the absolute worst thing a book can be.
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