Book Store   Audio Books   Child Books   Comic Books   Computer Books  
The Great Gatsby Books In Print, Audio Books.
Home » All Books

The Great Gatsby
buy bestselling books in print, audio books
The Great Gatsby List Price: $12.95
Our Price:
You Save: $0

[ + Zoom ]   [ Buy Now ] Book : This item is currently not available.
The Great Gatsby description
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 becomes 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 she does, events unfold with all the tragic inevitability of a Greek drama, with detached, cynical neighbor 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.

The Great Gatsby Customer Reviews
  1     2     3  
♥♥♥♥ Does the past set you free?
I read this book after having known the plot and ending, through another novel, The Double Bind by Chris Bohjalian. I figured it sounded interesting and thought I would read it for myself. Having known the ending didn't make for the most exciting read, but it was good. More than that, it was more about what the novel represented and did not say.

I won't go through the plot. The 1920's were a fascenating time and this novel helped capture that. While it was also written during this period, it had very much a sound and tone of an older novel which did take a little getting used to. Overall, I'd describe it as a little more bland or plain spoken that what you might read today. The character development was done with finess and the story was brought along to the conclusion masterfully. Towards the end you just wanted to skip through to see how it would end.

Overall it's a tragic tale. There's a lot of tragedy in the book, however it's interesting how the author choses to present this to us, in a matter of fact way. What really resonates with me is the topic of the past and how some of us are prisoners of it. And how often a first love, may be your only true love. The notion that maybe you can recapture this one day, is something I think many can relate to. Great novel, I'm glad I decided to finally get around to reading this classic.
  1     2     3