Stars: 3/5
Blurb: A modern-day Gatsby tale of forbidden love, family secrets and the true price of wealth.
The story begins with a dinner party invitation. When young journalist Thomas Cleary is sent to dig up quotes for the obituary of a legendary film producer, the man’s eccentric daughter offers him entree into the exclusive upper echelons of Hollywood society. A small-town boy with working-class roots, Thomas is a stranger in this opulent world of private jets and sprawling mansions.
Then he meets Matilda Duplaine.
Matilda is a beautiful and mysterious young woman who has never left the lush Bel-Air estate where she was raised. Thomas is immediately entranced by the enigmatic girl and the two begin a secret love affair. But what starts as an enchanted romance soon unravels a web of secrets and lies that could destroy their lives and the lives of everyone around them forever.
Filled with unforgettable characters and charm, The Gilded Life of Matilda Duplaine is a sparkling love letter to Los Angeles and a captivating journey beyond the golden gates of its most glamorous estates. Timeless, romantic and utterly absorbing, it is a mesmerizing and poignant exploration of life’s unexpected riches.
I’ve never understood the attraction to The Great Gatsby. I really haven’t — it’s one of those classics that has been unreachable to me — it’s probably the setting as much as I’ve discovered after reading this, the use of a narrator. It takes me one step more step away from Gatsby and Daisy — and I couldn’t connect with their or their purported love story.
In The Gilded Life of Mathilda Duplaine, the story is Thomas’ — a journalist and a good guy who loves absolutely and suffers heartbreak just as much. That’s not to say he is unaware of what he needs to do and to take advantage of to get ahead as a journalist — like the connections with Lily. She is the daughter of a director who has just passed and is the gatekeeper to this world of wealth and prestige, and characters that Thomas finds himself drawn into.
He enjoys the wealth, the connections it brings to him and the opportunities it affords him at work. That said, I don’t want to leave the impression that he is only about that — he isn’t — but, who can fault him for taking advantage of the opportunities afforded to him?
It’s one of these opportunities that leads to him meeting Mathilda Duplaine and falling in love with her. It’s the beginning of their love story, but it’s also the beginning of Thomas’ deeper investigation into the characters that inhabit this world of wealth and privilege. Slowly but surely, he and we see how everyone is interconnected, how wealth and power influenced them.
Perhaps the Gatsby comparison shaped my thinking in this regard, but I didn’t expect to understand the secondary cast of wealthy characters in this story. But in this story, wealth does not preclude very normal desires and decisions — bad decisions even.
I liked Thomas, I liked that he was easy to identify with, imperfect choices and all. Mathilda, though, is an enigma at times, by virtue of her … situation. Wait, let me rephrase, she’s perhaps an enigma for far too much of the book — I wanted to know more about her as her relationship with Thomas started. But, a couple of days later thinking about the book, I understood that she needed to be — she needed to be that mysterious ideal that Thomas loves before the truth about her is revealed.
It’s entirely possible, the Gatsby comparison might deter people from reading this because with that expectation comes too many assumptions about the book — I think it’s different enough, and a strong enough story to stand without that.
Does the Gatsby comparison make you want to read this book or not? Do comparisons like this deter you from books or make you pick them up instead?
I’m torn, it depends on the comparisons for me.
The appeal of The Great Gatsby honestly never made sense to me. It was one of the few required reading books I had to just Spark Note because I gave up on it.
Personally the comparison somewhat deters me from picking up the book, even though I was drawn in by the cover and synopsis.
Oh, I hear you — I’ve never understood the appeal of The Great Gatsby either. I think part of the reason I picked this one up was that I hoped I would be able to under TGG better, but I found this book had less to do with Gatsby than I thought — and internally I cheered!