Collins Classics - The Great Gatsby
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Product Description
HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.
‘I believe that on the first night I went to Gatsby’s house I was one of the few guests who had actually been invited. People were not invited – they went there’.
Considered one of the all-time great American works of fiction, Fitzgerald’s glorious yet ultimately tragic social satire on the Jazz Age encapsulates the exuberance, energy and decadence of an era.
After the war, the mysterious Jay Gatsby, a self-made millionaire pursues wealth, riches and the lady he lost to another man with stoic determination. He buys a mansion across from her house and throws lavish parties to try and entice her. When Gatsby finally does reunite with Daisy Buchanan, tragic events are set in motion.
Told through the eyes of his detached and omnipresent neighbour and friend, Nick Carraway, Fitzgerald’s succinct and powerful prose hints at the destruction and tragedy that awaits.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
0 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I found the great gatsby to be both a worthy read. in terms of length the story was succinct. far too many books are overly long with too much time wasted describing the scene rather than dealing with the story.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
6 reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
To whatever extent anything more needs to be said about this book...
14 July 2011
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
It's a powerfully written classic with uncommon, often devastating insight on the human condition, worthy of all the praise its earned for generations. The kind of book every idealist (myself included) should read, regardless of what we're idealistic about (love, God, country, ourselves, etc.), and a story so fundamental that it makes you rethink who you believe you are. It may be set in the Jazz Age, but the lessons will always be relevant, no matter the era. Fitzgerald's economical prose is second-to-none and makes the book highly re-readable; and most authors could write for a lifetime and never come up with as haunting, and true, a climactic line as "I'm thirty - I'm five years too old to lie to myself and call it honor."
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
`There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired.'
30 May 2012
Format:Paperback
The story of Jay Gatsby is narrated by Nick Carraway. Carraway had graduated from New Haven in 1915, had participated in the Great War and, returning restless, decided to move East and learn the bond business. In the spring of 1922, he rents a house in West Egg, Long Island next to the mansion of Gatsby - a mysterious host of large and extravagant parties.
It seems that few people know anything about Gatsby, so speculation is rife. Gatsby is wealthy and powerful, and knows how to get things done. And yet, while many flock to his parties, he seems to have no friends, only business associates. A man of mystery.
Nick Carraway's second cousin, once removed, is Daisy Buchanan. Daisy and Tom (and their daughter Pammy) live on the more fashionable East Egg side of Long Island. Nick had met her husband Tom at New Haven and Nick calls on them soon after moving to West Egg. During his visit, Nick also meets Jordan Baker who tells him that Tom has a mistress, and finds that here as well that Gatsby, his parties and his wealth are a topic of discussion. There is a lot of restless energy here, as well as a sense of dissatisfaction, of boredom and of wanting more from life.
Myrtle Wilson, Tom's mistress, lives with her husband Tom near an expanse of land known as the Valley of Ashes. A wasteland of sorts, between New York and Long Island, constantly under the view of an advertisement for an oculist.
`But above the gray land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift endlessly over it, you perceive, after a moment, the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg.'
Through Nick and Jordan, Daisy is reintroduced to Gatsby. She had been engaged to him before her marriage to Tom, back when he had no money. Gatsby still loves Daisy, and hopes to recapture this past romance.
``Can't repeat the past?' he cried incredulously. `Why of course you can.''
Unfortunately, for Jay Gatsby, he cannot repeat the past. And a series of unfortunate coincidences and tragedies obliterate his future as well as that of the Wilsons. It's of no consequence to Tom and Daisy, the destruction that they cause and retreat from. They live in and for the moment, without loyalty and without care.
`They were careless people, Tom and Daisy - they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made ...'
`Her voice is full of money', he said suddenly.' And money talks in this novel, but it has to be the `right' sort of `old' money. There is no place for a parvenu like Gatsby, and there are few mourners at his funeral.
It's been forty years since I last read this novel, and while I remembered the story fairly well, it had a different impact this time around. The first time around I wondered how people could be so fickle and shallow, this time I was more focussed on how Fitzgerald manages to complete such an unsettling story within fewer than 150 pages. All versions of the early 20th century American Dream portrayed in this book are flawed: those who can see the flaws can do nothing and those who strive to live it are doomed to fail. Equality is not realisable.
And if I read it again? Who knows what I'll think of it.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
It seems that few people know anything about Gatsby, so speculation is rife. Gatsby is wealthy and powerful, and knows how to get things done. And yet, while many flock to his parties, he seems to have no friends, only business associates. A man of mystery.
Nick Carraway's second cousin, once removed, is Daisy Buchanan. Daisy and Tom (and their daughter Pammy) live on the more fashionable East Egg side of Long Island. Nick had met her husband Tom at New Haven and Nick calls on them soon after moving to West Egg. During his visit, Nick also meets Jordan Baker who tells him that Tom has a mistress, and finds that here as well that Gatsby, his parties and his wealth are a topic of discussion. There is a lot of restless energy here, as well as a sense of dissatisfaction, of boredom and of wanting more from life.
Myrtle Wilson, Tom's mistress, lives with her husband Tom near an expanse of land known as the Valley of Ashes. A wasteland of sorts, between New York and Long Island, constantly under the view of an advertisement for an oculist.
`But above the gray land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift endlessly over it, you perceive, after a moment, the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg.'
Through Nick and Jordan, Daisy is reintroduced to Gatsby. She had been engaged to him before her marriage to Tom, back when he had no money. Gatsby still loves Daisy, and hopes to recapture this past romance.
``Can't repeat the past?' he cried incredulously. `Why of course you can.''
Unfortunately, for Jay Gatsby, he cannot repeat the past. And a series of unfortunate coincidences and tragedies obliterate his future as well as that of the Wilsons. It's of no consequence to Tom and Daisy, the destruction that they cause and retreat from. They live in and for the moment, without loyalty and without care.
`They were careless people, Tom and Daisy - they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made ...'
`Her voice is full of money', he said suddenly.' And money talks in this novel, but it has to be the `right' sort of `old' money. There is no place for a parvenu like Gatsby, and there are few mourners at his funeral.
It's been forty years since I last read this novel, and while I remembered the story fairly well, it had a different impact this time around. The first time around I wondered how people could be so fickle and shallow, this time I was more focussed on how Fitzgerald manages to complete such an unsettling story within fewer than 150 pages. All versions of the early 20th century American Dream portrayed in this book are flawed: those who can see the flaws can do nothing and those who strive to live it are doomed to fail. Equality is not realisable.
And if I read it again? Who knows what I'll think of it.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Great Gatsby
13 May 2012
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
The book arrived on time and was as eexpected. The book was required reading by my daughters American Lit class. It has been read and annotated and analyzed...she found the book to be interesting and easy to read.
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