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The Great Gatsby: A Graphic Novel Adaptation


My Review:

The Great Gatsby is one of the classics that I somehow missed in high school, and though it is well-loved it was one that I never felt compelled to read. Maybe I just wasn’t that interested in the roaring twenties, but there was nothing about the various descriptions that I had read that pulled me in. I even skipped the film adaptations, I just can’t explain why I had no interest in this story.

Despite that, when I was offered the opportunity to read a graphic novel adaptation, and my husband expressed to me how much he enjoyed the novel, I decided to give it a try. Heavens how wrong I was to skip over this story for so long! I ended up flying through the graphic novel, I ate up the story and immediately ordered a copy of the novel as soon as I finished.

Since this is an adaptation of a piece of classical literature, I will not comment on the story itself since I have yet to read the novel. However, I do want to cover how well this graphic novel does at adapting the story.

The art is excellent, it reminds me of older drawing styles that are fitting for the time period. The pages are beautifully watercolored and are bursting with fun details and color, Gatsby’s parties look whimsical and wild. Where the adaptation suffers is in the format itself, where much of the story is shown to us in pictures instead of told through narrative. There is some dialogue to carry the story, and random blocks of narration, while artfully placed in the background, make the story feel like there are some holes. It makes the reading experience feel a bit like an abbreviated version of the story, showing the major events like a storyboard without any of the detail in between.

Despite this, I feel that a graphic novel adaptation is great because it introduces a wide audience to classic literature in a way that is easy to digest. It helped an uninterested reader like me to take an interest in reading the original work and that I feel is the major goal of any adaptation. In all, I’m thankful to this graphic novel for expanding my horizons, and it is one that I would gladly recommend.


“She was appalled by West Egg⁠—appalled by the two obtrusive fate that herded its inhabitants along a shortcut from nothing to nothing.”


Trigger Warning: Mild Violence, Infidelity


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Nasty Women


My Thoughts

This book seems to have been published as a direct reaction to the 2016 election, and I read it years ago as an ARC. It is an anthology that covers the intersections of race, sexuality, and feminism. It was really cool to get to see the world through the eyes of women coming from walks of life entirely removed from my own. There were many whose struggles I couldn’t even begin to imagine dealing with, while others I found comfort that I wasn’t alone in the issues that I have faced. Nasty Women covers a wide range of topics by authors from drastically different backgrounds.

“Being able to be myself was like being able to exhale for the first time after holding my breath for years. It’s only when you taste freedom that you can see how tight your bonds were.”

The one essay that stood out the most to me was Choices by Rowan C. Clarke, which discussed the author’s difficult relationship with her mother and that never-ending struggle to please. While the underlying messages in all of the stories were political and feminist, they were also very personal and down to earth which is what made this collection pretty emotional.

I did have a few issues with the anthology, however, that I need to address. The first was that since there was no specific theme the quality of each essay varied pretty wildly. The ARC kindle edition that I read also had formatting errors with the citations. As for the actual content, most were incredibly well written and heartfelt, but a few felt like angry rants that were more alienating than empowering.

While on the subject of alienation, despite the rather diverse sets of authors and essays, I feel like there were some missing pieces still. It’s obvious from the title what many of the authors thought about the 2016 election and who they voted for. The politics were so black and white that there was no room in-between, and the discussion of what were recent events at the time seriously dates this book. With these sorts of books, the only readers they invite are ones looking for confirmation bias. With today’s political climate in the United States, this is a tragedy because it completely closes the door on discussion with the other side.

Don’t get me wrong, I think that what was already here was pretty great. I see what they were going for and I appreciated it. I love to see discussions about politics and social issues, but I worry when the tone leans too far toward one extreme it only invites backlash from the other extreme. It’s a difficult balancing act between maintaining one’s own core beliefs while also trying to open discussion with the other side so that perhaps they could engage in the conversation and, ideally, listen and have their own perceptions changed.

But I digress, despite the complaints I had about the book, I found it to be a pretty quick and enjoyable read. It gives a voice to groups of women that aren’t often heard in the greater narrative of the feminist movement. The experiences of these many women enrich that narrative and there’s a lot we can all learn from each other especially in these troubling times.


three-half-stars