The Great Mann is a historical fiction novel inspired by The Great Gatsby. Like Gatsby, The Great Mann has a wealthy, mysterious figure who throws extravagant parties while hoping for the attention of a past love, a wealthy but unhappily married couple in a wealthy enclave, and a new arrival, striving to gain a piece of the American Dream.

My familiarity with Gatsby helped me see the similarities, but the differences are where The Great Mann shines. Instead of the 1920s, it is post-WWII 1940s, instead of Long Island, it is a wealthy Black enclave, Sugar Hill, in West Adams Heights, Los Angeles. There are true historical figures such as Hattie McDaniel and Lena Horne and others in this story, weaved in perfectly with the racial housing covenants and a real court case and our fictional characters. I enjoyed this book a lot and learned a lot of history, too!

Really enjoyed this book. Loved the writing style and I felt immersed into the story. Hope this author writes more books like this.

I first fell in love with The Great Gatsby in 1978 as a HS junior then again in the 1980s when I taught it to my own excited HS sophomores. When I saw that there was a reimaging of this classic novel, I knew I had to give it a try.

I loved it. Kyra Davis Lurie does an excellent job taking this tiny premise from the original novel and expanding on it - "As we crossed Blackwell's Island a limousine passed us, driven by a white chauffeur, in which sat three modish negroes, two bucks and a girl. I laughed aloud as the yolks of their eyeballs rolled toward us in haughty rivalry...Anything can happen now that we've slid over this bridge," I thought; anything at all..."

Let's hold that thought and move to the mid 1940s instead of of the roaring '20s; let's put our story in Sugar Hill, the Black, wealthy neighborhood of Adams Heights in LA. Now you've got your setting. Let's keep with the elusive character of Gatsby, now James Mann, throw in a cousin narrator, Nick, now Charlie, cousin to the beautiful, but also selfish and deceiving Daisy, now Margarite. Of course, Margarite is married to a womanizing scoundrel, Tom, now Terrence. One of Terrence's womanizing interests is Delores, our original Myrtle. This time, however, this love affair is a White woman having an affair with a Black man in a neighborhood that is already on the edge and just waiting to explode from racial tensions.

You have the cast all laid out for you, but in Lurie's reimaging, there is so much more going on. Of course, James (our Gatsby-like character) throws elaborate parties just to try to get the attention of his one time love - you guessed it, Margarite. But, besides our Gatsby plot threads, you've got so much more happening. There is the looming (then occurring) court case where the Whites who have remained in Sugar Hill want the Blacks who have purchased houses there now evicted. You have movie stars, Hollywood reporters, successful Black business men who came from the South westward for the promise of a better life now in fear for their lives, their livelihoods, and possible looming evictions.

Not only are we treated to James' (Gatsby's) over the top parties, Hattie McDaniel, who played Mammy on Gone With the Wind, is a Sugar Hill resident who throws some hellacious ones, too. Movie stars - Clark Gable, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers - frequent the neighborhood. Could these Black residents, who seemed to have escaped Jim Crow laws and seemed to have come so far, be saved by the 14th Amendment? It's really an unsure and sadly an up in the air time period for African Americans. Hattie's portrayal of Mammy won her an Academy Award - the first for a Black actress; yet, Hattie was not allowed in the theater for the movie's showing. Still, we see Hollywood stars and starlets from both races flock to her mansion in Sugar Hill.

I loved the book. I not only enjoyed the character comparisons, but I also marveled at all of the research that the author did to put us as readers in this true life setting. I admired Lurie's ability to draw us in and make us invested in these new, Gatsby-like characters.

The Great Gatsby is one of my all time favorite books. i read it in HS and i have re-read it multiple times. Never in my mind did i think there could be such an amazing retelling. This is sooo powerful. great writing. I love it. and now i want to see it on the screen

From the moment I read the synopsis, I was excited. Historical fiction is one of my favorite genres and the author truly had me at black re-telling of The Great Gatsby. The story as a whole was really interesting to me, it did hit slow point toward the end where I kind of got a little bored but it pulled back in at the ending chapters. Definitely recommending this one to my historical girls come Summer time.