An intriguing and delightful queer romance that does not quite bring Gatsby back to life.
A sequel to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece imagines the life of a gay Jay Gatsby.
“I had scarcely got Gatsby across the threshold…when to our astonishment it became clear that there was something resembling life in him yet,’’ writes narrator Nick Carraway at the beginning of Odasso’s novel. Instead of dying from a gunshot wound, as he did at the end of Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, this Gatsby recovers under Nick’s tender care and in his bed. Somewhere between fan fiction and literary thought experiment, Odasso’s book sets up Nick and Gatsby as lovers and ships them off on a steamy honeymoon through Canada, England, and France. The couple settle in Boston, where Nick’s cousin Daisy reappears in their lives. Daisy created tension in the original and has come back to complicate things. This time, the drama revolves around her daughter, Pam. A bright and sassy girl with more love for books than boys, Pam is starting to realize who she really is—and who she could be—with the help of her supportive gay uncles. As in the first book, keeping up appearances is a dilemma for all the characters, but here, Nick and Gatsby’s tender love for each other helps them push through society’s expectations. There is something both silly and charming about the premise. Casual fans of the original will probably have a good laugh before getting drawn into the rather engaging romance Odasso has created (although they may need a Cliff’s Notes refresher before the first chapter). The novel’s prose feels impressively witty and natural—if more inspired by the general time period than Fitzgerald himself. The sex also maintains a careful balance: passionate and surprising without being lurid. But Odasso seems more interested in a queer family navigating the world of The Great Gatsby than directly engaging with or reimagining Fitzgerald’s mythic figures. Ironically, true Fitzgerald devotees may find this Gatsby to be a bit of a fraud.
An intriguing and delightful queer romance that does not quite bring Gatsby back to life.Pub Date: Sept. 28, 2021
ISBN: 978-1953910875
Page Count: 170
Publisher: DartFrog Blue
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Tinny perhaps, but still a minutely rendered and impressively steady feminist vision of apocalypse.
The time is the not-so-distant future, when the US's spiraling social freedoms have finally called down a reaction, an Iranian-style repressive "monotheocracy" calling itself the Republic of Gilead—a Bible-thumping, racist, capital-punishing, and misogynistic rule that would do away with pleasure altogether were it not for one thing: that the Gileadan women, pure and true (as opposed to all the nonbelieving women, those who've ever been adulterous or married more than once), are found rarely fertile.
Thus are drafted a whole class of "handmaids," whose function is to bear the children of the elite, to be fecund or else (else being certain death, sent out to be toxic-waste removers on outlying islands). The narrative frame for Atwood's dystopian vision is the hopeless private testimony of one of these surrogate mothers, Offred ("of" plus the name of her male protector). Lying cradled by the body of the barren wife, being meanwhile serviced by the husband, Offred's "ceremony" must be successful—if she does not want to join the ranks of the other disappeared (which include her mother, her husband—dead—and small daughter, all taken away during the years of revolt). One Of her only human conduits is a gradually developing affair with her master's chauffeur—something that's balanced more than offset, though, by the master's hypocritically un-Puritan use of her as a kind of B-girl at private parties held by the ruling men in a spirit of nostalgia and lust. This latter relationship, edging into real need (the master's), is very effectively done; it highlights the handmaid's (read Everywoman's) eternal exploitation, profane or sacred ("We are two-legged wombs, that's all: sacred vessels, ambulatory chalices"). Atwood, to her credit, creates a chillingly specific, imaginable night-mare. The book is short on characterization—this is Atwood, never a warm writer, at her steeliest—and long on cynicism—it's got none of the human credibility of a work such as Walker Percy's Love In The Ruins. But the scariness is visceral, a world that's like a dangerous and even fatal grid, an electrified fence.
Tinny perhaps, but still a minutely rendered and impressively steady feminist vision of apocalypse.Pub Date: Feb. 17, 1985
ISBN: 038549081X
Page Count: -
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1985
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
A vivid, exciting page-turner from one of our most interesting authors of historical fiction.
When a man accused of rape turns up dead, an Early American town seeks justice amid rumors and controversy.
Lawhon’s fifth work of historical fiction is inspired by the true story and diaries of midwife Martha Ballard of Hallowell, Maine, a character she brings to life brilliantly here. As Martha tells her patient in an opening chapter set in 1789, “You need not fear….In all my years attending women in childbirth, I have never lost a mother.” This track record grows in numerous compelling scenes of labor and delivery, particularly one in which Martha has to clean up after the mistakes of a pompous doctor educated at Harvard, one of her nemeses in a town that roils with gossip and disrespect for women’s abilities. Supposedly, the only time a midwife can testify in court is regarding paternity when a woman gives birth out of wedlock—but Martha also takes the witness stand in the rape case against a dead man named Joshua Burgess and his living friend Col. Joseph North, whose role as judge in local court proceedings has made the victim, Rebecca Foster, reluctant to make her complaint public. Further complications are numerous: North has control over the Ballard family's lease on their property; Rebecca is carrying the child of one of her rapists; Martha’s son was seen fighting with Joshua Burgess on the day of his death. Lawhon weaves all this into a richly satisfying drama that moves suspensefully between childbed, courtroom, and the banks of the Kennebec River. The undimmed romance between 40-something Martha and her husband, Ephraim, adds a racy flair to the proceedings. Knowing how rare the quality of their relationship is sharpens the intensity of Martha’s gaze as she watches the romantic lives of her grown children unfold. As she did with Nancy Wake in Code Name Hélène (2020), Lawhon creates a stirring portrait of a real-life heroine and, as in all her books, includes an endnote with detailed background.
A vivid, exciting page-turner from one of our most interesting authors of historical fiction.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9780385546874
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
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