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The Great Gatsby (Penguin Popular Classics)
 
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The Great Gatsby (Penguin Popular Classics) (Paperback)

by F Scott Fitzgerald (Author)
4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (41 customer reviews)
RRP: £2.50
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  • This item: The Great Gatsby (Penguin Popular Classics) by F Scott Fitzgerald

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    Eligible for FREE UK delivery on orders over £5 with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions

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Product details

  • Paperback: 192 pages
  • Publisher: Penguin Classics; New Ed edition (25 Jan 2007)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0140620184
  • ISBN-13: 978-0140620184
  • Product Dimensions: 18 x 11 x 1 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (41 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 155 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in these categories:

    #1 in  Books > Fiction > 20th Century Classics > Fitzgerald, F. Scott
    #2 in  Books > Fiction > World > American > Classics
    #5 in  Books > Fiction > By Period > 20th Century

Product Description

Amazon.co.uk 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

Product Description
Jay Gatsby is the man who has everything. But one thing will always be out of his reach ... Everybody who is anybody is seen at his glittering parties. Day and night his Long Island mansion buzzes with bright young things drinking, dancing and debating his mysterious character. For Gatsby - young, handsome, fabulously rich - always seems alone in the crowd, watching and waiting, though no one knows what for. Beneath the shimmering surface of his life he is hiding a secret: a silent longing that can never be fulfilled. And soon this destructive obsession will force his world to unravel.

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The Great Gatsby (Penguin Popular Classics)
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Customer Reviews

41 Reviews
5 star:
 (30)
4 star:
 (7)
3 star:
 (3)
2 star:
 (1)
1 star:    (0)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
4.6 out of 5 stars (41 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A Glittering Gem, 18 Oct 2005
By Whittaker "Whit" (Hampshire, England) - See all my reviews
"They had forgotten me, but Daisy glanced up and held out her hand; Gatsby didn't know me now at all. I looked once more at them and they looked back at me, remotely, possessed by intense life. Then I went out of the room and down the marble steps into the rain, leaving them there together."

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote of a world he knew. He would have been familiar with the rich life of endless parties thrown by Jay Gatsby in an effort to attract his one time love, Daisy. On the surface, Fitzgerald's fleshy, well-developed characters live glamorous, frivolous lives but they all are lacking in love, in one way or another.

This beautiful, sparsely written novel writes definitively and amusingly of love, loss, betrayal and emptiness. It should be on the "must read" list of any reader, particularly those interested in a unique and, one imagines, accurate portrayal of upper middle class life during the years in between the great wars.

No hesitation - 5 stars.

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22 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A green light to go and read this novel, 25 Nov 2002
'Gatsby' is the American Dream; but more than that, 'Gatsby' is about dreaming. It is an incredibly concise novel of lyrical genius. It is poetry and social commentary. A work of art and a historical document. A light breeze through the jazz age and a complex layering of narrative perspectives. A hedonistic trip through gloriously decadent capitalist excess and a crushingly melancholic musing on lost love.
If you're a romantic read this because Fitzgerald's employment of prose will make you weep.
If you're an english student read this because it will tell you everything you need to know about the influence of cinema.
If you're a historian read this for the way Fitzgerald doctors his text to avoid censorship laws in 1925.
If you're a social scientist read this because it has only one equal in its study of the illusion of American idealism. Alexis de Tocqueville's 'Democracy in America' is 100 years older, 250 pages longer, and not written in melting prose.
That is not to say that this work is without fault. Crucially for anyone who is compelled to regard such things in a novel that doesn't warrant it, the logic of Carraway's narrative does not follow. Fitzgerald originally wrote what now constitues the ending to sit at the front of the novel, and in its new-found position Carraway has access to information that in reality he would not have. This, as might be apparent, is the criticism of a man who was forced to read the work at A-Level.
Strangely, this has not diminuished from his continued enjoyment. Indeed, even after numerous returns to Fitzgerald's astonishingly few pages this is the single fault I find in this work.
Daisy will make you want to love. Tom will make you want to earn millions. Gatsby will make you want to dream.
Read it first as a fantastically crafted story, second as an insightful social commentary, and third as a work of perspective genius. Read it because you haven't already. It is as brilliant as that green light.
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12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars The Greatest Book Ever Written, 30 Jun 2005
By Zak (London, United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
The Great Gatsby - the greatest book ever written? A bold statement open to attack, but not when you consider the sublime poetic narrative, the lucid characterisation, the rich thematic content and the grandness of its morality. And told with such economy - it can be read in a few hours. Fitzgerald, out of moneyed world of Princeton and, later, on the bottle, presents an antithetical journey of America the ideal and tawdry Americanisation, of dripping wealth and rampant moral poverty, of exhalting life and instant death. And for James Gatz becoming Jay Gatsby - a path of longing, luxuriant idividualism to worldly spiritual suffocation. Look at America today and the status of this text is revealed: a nation's commercial, social and ethical fabric is built up around the culture of this outstanding book.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

3.0 out of 5 stars NOT the best piece of American literature ever written...
Many say that "The Great Gatsby" is one of the best pieces of American literature ever written, but I have to agree that I don't feel it lived up to all the hype. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Amanda Hinks

4.0 out of 5 stars A Literary Exploration
The Great Gatsby, acclaimed by some to be the greatest American novel of all time, is an exquisite and complex read that leaves many messages and ideas in the mind after reading... Read more
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