“It's like there's this knowledge hanging in the air that one person has more power than the other, and we're supposed to pretend everything is nice and normal and equal, but in reality, luck or chance has showered benefits on one person that the other person couldn't dream of.”
The thing about retellings of classic literature is that, despite its source material aging really well and somehow remaining relevant even as the times change, it's always going to be a bumpy path to adapt it to modern-times. The Great Gatsby has something timeless to it that makes it easier to change the story--to modernize it, to bring it to today's world whilst keeping its general heartbeat going. Great proves that it's possible to take a story we know and love, and give it new life.
Sara Benincasa has this lightness to her prose that is fluffy and honest; gritty and cheesy. It's fun. It is reminiscent of Gatsby, but still its own story. What I liked most about it was seeing how she adapts the tale as something new. These characters are new; they are not the exact mirror of their original counterparts. Not only are the names different, their genders and the like are changed too. There are those signs of life from the original source but there's an inclusion to this one that makes it that much more of its own story.
