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The Great Gatsby (Penguin Popular Classics)

by: F Scott Fitzgerald

January 25, 2007
During the course of a year I am intending to return to classic novels. It would be unrealistic to try and rate these alongside new novels so I'm not even going to try - just simple reviews.

The power in Fitzgerald's writing is its starkness and sparsity. The Great Gatsby is a short novel by any standards but its power lies in the way the story creeps up on you. It's almost as if nothing seems to be happening but then you realise that in a very subtle way the action has carried you away.

Set in the Jazz area on Long Island it's a story of greed, love and lust, violence where things are rarely what they seem. Fitzgerald weaves intrigue into the plot. We are never really sure about who Gatsby is and what brings him to ... Read More:

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The Great Gatsby: York Notes Advanced

by: F. Scott Fitzgerald

April 01, 2004
Barcode: 9780582823105

So, like most people, i used CGP notes while doing my GCSE's and found them mostly good (especially on the poem anthologies) - the humour though, while sometimes fun on many occasions got in the way of serious learning and the notes were brief when dealing with full length plays and novels.

Step in York Notes. For my A Level English i got one of these books for each of my set texts and they were massively helpful in prompting class discussions, writing essays and revising for the exams. They offer detailed chapter summaries and analyse them in an extremely informative way.

There's quotes too, maybe a little too few, but the ones they pick out are good and then at the end of the book you ... Read More:

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The Great Gatsby (Penguin Modern Classics)

by: F. Scott Fitzgerald

February 24, 2000
This is a very good book. But let's not get carried away, just because it is often one of the few books we have studied:It isn't great.'Heart of Darkness',puts it in the shade.....Tolstoy and Proust and soooo many others put it's status into perspective. But, still, it's certainly worth a read, like I said, it's a good book. Very good. It's just NOT great.

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Tender is the Night (Penguin Popular Classics)

by: F Scott Fitzgerald

January 25, 2007
In a Swiss sanatorium above lake Zürich, Dr Richard (Dick) Diver meets a fascinating young patient, Nicole Warren. Nicole suffers from Divided Personality at its acute down-hill phase which translates in her fear of men because she was the victim of incest after her mother's death.
Nicole's state improves after some time at the clinic and Richard marries her. They move to the French Riviera where they live in the glamour provided by Nicole's family money but soon their luck runs out.
This novel is Fitzgerald's most personal one if one considers that his own wife Zelda became increasingly troubled with mental illness in the 1930s and so the story of Dick Diver and his schizophrenic wife Nicole shows the pain that the author went through himself. ... Read More:

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The Spoken Word - American Writers

by: Various Artists, John Steinbeck, F Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Arthur Miller, Raymond Chandler, Sinclair Lewis, Pearl Buck, Lillian Hellman, Ralph Ellison

October 27, 2008
In a Swiss sanatorium above lake Zürich, Dr Richard (Dick) Diver meets a fascinating young patient, Nicole Warren. Nicole suffers from Divided Personality at its acute down-hill phase which translates in her fear of men because she was the victim of incest after her mother's death.
Nicole's state improves after some time at the clinic and Richard marries her. They move to the French Riviera where they live in the glamour provided by Nicole's family money but soon their luck runs out.
This novel is Fitzgerald's most personal one if one considers that his own wife Zelda became increasingly troubled with mental illness in the 1930s and so the story of Dick Diver and his schizophrenic wife Nicole shows the pain that the author went through himself. ... Read More:

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The Beautiful and Damned (Penguin Modern Classics)

by: F Scott Fitzgerald

September 30, 2004
F.Scott Fitzgerald is a writer of remarkable talent. His prose sparkles with a beauty that juxtaposes with his often tragic subject matter. 'The Beautiful and Damned' explores some of the issues that would plague his own career as a writer who never really managed to top the acclaim bestowed upon 'The Great Gatsby', a devastatingly beautiful and seminal piece of 20th century literature. 'The Beautiful and Damned' boasts an array of would-be writers, actresses and dancers whom epitomise an era of of vanity, excess and alcohol. But underneath the shiny veneer lurks the inner turmoil of Anthony's talent that is never successfully fulfilled and capricious Gloria's despair that her good looks cannot be maintained. Anthony's descent into alcohol and depression is truely heartbreaking, ... Read More:

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The Great Gatsby (Wordsworth Classics)

by: F.Scott Fitzgerald

May 01, 1992
The main story -- a romantic man's doomed attempt to recapture the love of an immature woman -- was less enthralling than expected. Daisy seemed hardly worth all the trouble Gatsby took, and for that matter, neither did entry into her world. She was a cipher. The use of a narrator to connect the various characters was interesting; how could the book have been written otherwise? But at times the plot felt contrived, as with the switching of cars and an accident, and the symbolism around the valley of ashes seemed heavy-handed. Other than the passive narrator, the people lacked even a small degree of self-awareness. (One of the author's points, I assume.) The character who seemed the least conflicted and most sure of himself throughout was the brutal, self-centered Tom.

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The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

by: F.Scott Fitzgerald

September 01, 2008
The main story -- a romantic man's doomed attempt to recapture the love of an immature woman -- was less enthralling than expected. Daisy seemed hardly worth all the trouble Gatsby took, and for that matter, neither did entry into her world. She was a cipher. The use of a narrator to connect the various characters was interesting; how could the book have been written otherwise? But at times the plot felt contrived, as with the switching of cars and an accident, and the symbolism around the valley of ashes seemed heavy-handed. Other than the passive narrator, the people lacked even a small degree of self-awareness. (One of the author's points, I assume.) The character who seemed the least conflicted and most sure of himself throughout was the brutal, self-centered Tom.

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Tender is the Night: A Romance (Penguin Modern Classics)

by: F. Scott Fitzgerald

June 28, 2001
In a Swiss sanatorium above lake Zürich, Dr Richard (Dick) Diver meets a fascinating young patient, Nicole Warren. Nicole suffers from Divided Personality at its acute down-hill phase which translates in her fear of men because she was the victim of incest after her mother's death.
Nicole's state improves after some time at the clinic and Richard marries her. They move to the French Riviera where they live in the glamour provided by Nicole's family money but soon their luck runs out.
This novel is Fitzgerald's most personal one if one considers that his own wife Zelda became increasingly troubled with mental illness in the 1930s and so the story of Dick Diver and his schizophrenic wife Nicole shows the pain that the author went through himself. It is the moving account of the collapse ... Read More:

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The Great Gatsby (Penguin Classics Bill Amberg)

by: F Scott Fitzgerald

November 06, 2008
In a Swiss sanatorium above lake Zürich, Dr Richard (Dick) Diver meets a fascinating young patient, Nicole Warren. Nicole suffers from Divided Personality at its acute down-hill phase which translates in her fear of men because she was the victim of incest after her mother's death.
Nicole's state improves after some time at the clinic and Richard marries her. They move to the French Riviera where they live in the glamour provided by Nicole's family money but soon their luck runs out.
This novel is Fitzgerald's most personal one if one considers that his own wife Zelda became increasingly troubled with mental illness in the 1930s and so the story of Dick Diver and his schizophrenic wife Nicole shows the pain that the author went through himself. It is the moving account of the collapse ... Read More: