Post by emma on May 2, 2007 17:26:59 GMT
i read all of this in one day-today-because it's so short. i really enjoyed it.
![:)](http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i316/lifedrinker69/smiles/smile.gif)
i'm a big fan of classic American literature (e.g. Steinbeck) and this book for me reminded me of a lot of Evelyn Waugh and other literature (albeit English) from the first 30 years of the twentieth century, based around the lives of the rich set.
i had no idea what it was going to be about, i always thought it was going to be some horrendous war tome from the name (it just sounds like a famous battle or something) but i'm glad i was wrong!
it reminded me of Waugh's work because although these people are filthy rich they all have bizarre love-lives involving mistresses and 'young sweeties' but they are never truly happy, always worrying about something (namely money and their reputation, and essentially What's Going To Happen Next). and all the while technology and the industrial revolution is contuining apace around them, the modern world truly rushing past.
i suppose what i like so much about these sort of books is that everything is very new and very grand - America as we know it was just being born around this time, people such as JD Rockafeller were making their first millions and so on. and yet we can look back with a kind of smugness which the authors allow us because they emphasise the melancholia of the age. it's really no wonder that The Depression happened in this climate of existing negativity.