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    Great
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    Great
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    Great
    Ebook248 pages3 hours

    Great

    By Sara Benincasa

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    In this contemporary retelling of The Great Gatsby, by comedian Sara Benincasa, a teenage girl becomes entangled in the romance and drama of a Hamptons social circle and is implicated in a scandal that shakes the summer community.

    When Naomi Rye arrives in the Hamptons to spend the summer with her socialite mother, she fully expects to be miserable mingling with the sons and daughters of her mother's mega-rich friends. Yet Naomi finds herself unexpectedly drawn to her mysterious and beautiful next-door neighbor, Jacinta, a Hamptons "It" girl who throws wild, lavish parties that are the talk of the town. But Jacinta is hiding something big, and events unfold with tragic consequences.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperTeen
    Release dateApr 8, 2014
    ISBN9780062222718
    Unavailable
    Great
    Author

    Sara Benincasa

    Sara Benincasa is a comedian and author of  Real Artists Have Day Jobs (William Morrow 2016) as well as the books  DC Trip (Adaptive Books 2015), Great (2014), and Agorafabulous!: Dispatches From My Bedroom (William Morrow 2012), a book based on her critically acclaimed solo show about panic attacks and agoraphobia. She is currently adapting DC Trip as a film with producers Albert Berger and Ron Yerxa (Little Miss Sunshine, Nebraska, Election), Van Toffler, and Adaptive Studios. She is currently adapting Agorafabulous! as a TV pilot with executive producers Diablo Cody (Juno, The United States of Tara), and Ben Stiller’s Red Hour. She was born and raised in New Jersey and graduated from Warren Wilson College and Columbia University Teachers College. She lives in Los Angeles, California.

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    Reviews for Great

    4/5

    27 ratings6 reviews

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    • 4/5
      From my Cannonball Read 6 Review ...

      I first learned about Ms. Benincasa in 2008, when her Sarah Palin videos were making the rounds online. I can’t recall what happened to bring her to my attention a couple of years later, but I started listening to her “Sex and Other Human Activities” podcast (R.I.P.). Thankfully that led me to "Radio Dispatch" and my now-favorite daily news/cat stories/activism show "Citizen Radio". In 2012, her first book, Agorafabulous!, was the first book I purchased for my first e-reader. So what I’m saying is, I enjoy her work. We don’t always agree politically (I think she’s a bit more ‘just chill, it’s a joke’ than I am about things), but her tweets make me laugh, and her memoir was a really great, humorous look into her experience with depression.

      She hinted that she was working on a Young Adult version of The Great Gatsby over a year ago; a bit after that she said she was setting it in modern times, with younger characters and a gender switch for a couple of the main characters. I had to look this up online, but Nick has become Naomi and Jay is now Jacinta. In case it isn't obvious, I should probably admit here that while I’m sure I’ve read The Great Gatsby, I … don’t remember it. Really at all. At this point I think every mental image I can conjure up about that book is more likely to be from a preview of Baz Luhrman’s movie. I know. So keep that in mind when I say that I LOVED THIS BOOK.

      Seriously. I really enjoyed it, to the point where I put off a whole bunch of chores to make sure I finished it today. There were bits that I could tell were direct references to the original work (the green light is a computer charger port light, the billboard is now one advertising plastic surgery), but it still felt original, if that makes sense. The book is tightly written, easy to read, fun, sweet, and clever. The setting works really well, and while some references may become outdated (Facebook plays a bit of a role), I don't know how one could write a book about teenagers set in modern times and just pretend that social media doesn't exist. She also handles the fact that these young adults do have parents without necessarily making it all about those relationships. It'd be odd if 17-year-olds just existed in the Hamptons with no reference to the adults raising them. There's clearly some 'yeah, right' feel about some of the actions of these kids, but it's much more believable than, say, Gossip Girl.

      I’m glad I bought the electronic version, because I’m pretty sure it’ll become my go-to relaxation read.
    • 3/5
      Fun, fluffy little read. Sometimes the references back to Gatsby were clever - the "green light" is now a laptop charger - and sometimes they felt lazy. The hit-and-run from the original is pretty much rewritten scene for scene in this book.
    • 5/5
      Was this book perfect? No. Was it a perfect re-telling? Yes. 100% recommend.
    • 5/5
      Five stars! I loved this retelling of The Great Gatsby! As long as you don't focus so much on the Retelling part and focus on the actual story, it's a great one! I loved the attention to detail in the story that really helped me to visualize just how beautiful the settings and people in the book were. I also really enjoyed Naomi's character growth as she enters the Hamptons as a slightly rebellious teen to a young woman who knows the difference between who she thinks she is and who she knows she is. Loved it!
    • 4/5
      Well, that was something. I don't think many people will like this book(it stayed pretty close to the original characterization, which means basically ALL THESE CHARACTERS ARE AWFUL), but since I am strange and enjoy retellings of classic and unsympathetic characters, I loved it. What a great setting for a Gatsby retelling.
    • 4/5
      The Great Gatsby is one of my all-time favorite "classic" reads. I know it's totally cliche, but such a small book packs such a punch, every time I read it I get something new and fresh and different from the story. It embodies everything about the 20's that I love and tacks on some other scintillating topics as well: lust, secrets, murder, lavishness, drama...you name it, it's in the story. That's why, when I saw that Sara Benincasa was doing a 21st century retelling of the story of Gatsby with Great, I jumped at the opportunity to read it. I've had some luck recently with classic re-tellings and figured this might just continue my streak.Read the rest of this review at The Lost Entwife on March 14, 2014.