Beautiful Little Fools: A Novel

The Great Gatsby is a story told from one person’s perspective, Nick Carraway’s. We only see what he sees, through his eyes and his thoughts. The last time I read Gatsby, I thought it would be interesting for someone to retell the story, from a different perspective, maybe Daisy Buchanan’s or Jordan Baker’s. Jillian Cantor was way ahead of me! Not only had she already done that, she did it from the perspectives of four of the women in the story — Daisy, Jordan, Myrtle Wilson, and Myrtle’s sister, Catherine. And she added, in a way that gives the story a mystery twist, Detective Frank Baker’s investigation of Gatsby’s murder. The story is told in the alternating voices of the four women, starting with their own backgrounds and first encounters with Gatsby. It’s as if we were able to climb in behind the pages of the original story to see what was going on in each of their minds. And it is especially fascinating to flip the story and see it from the women’s side. In the Gatsby story, it is the men, especially Tom Buchanan and Gatsby himself who seem to be running the show. But are they really? The title of Cantor’s book is taken from Daisy’s remark when her daughter is born, “I hope she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.” But somewhere in the middle of the book, we start to wonder really who the fools are. Yes, Daisy has married badly. Myrtle thinks Tom is going to take her away from George, “out west,” and give her an…

I really did enjoy the book however, it would have helped me a lot if the chapters were numbered as well as given a name! I got lost when I forgot which one I was reading about sometimes, especially if I couldn’t get back to reading for a few days when my days were full! It was also hard to keep up with or remember which gal I was reading about if I had to put the book down for awhile! Many times I had to reread chapters cause I couldn’t remember who had the hairpin or how they got the gun??? But all in all I really enjoyed the book, I just have a lot going on in my life and so can’t just kept reading straight through!