The novel depicts the ultra-rich Winslow family and their idyllic summer compound Winloch, which is infiltrated by the lowly Mabel Dagmar, daughter of dry cleaners. Whereas Fitzgerald lamented the loss of the American dream, Miranda Beverly-Whittemore, in her new novel Bittersweet, seems to accept that the dream-and anyone who manages to attain it-is rotten to the core. Almost ninety years after the book was published, materialism and the debt that comes with it seem so entrenched in our culture that it’s hard to remember that the American dream ever consisted of anything other than the accumulation of more and more wealth, more and more stuff. The 2013 film adaptation found an audience perhaps because Fitzgerald’s themes continue to resonate. Scott Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby against the backdrop of the increased consumerism and materialism of the 1920s.
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