The cover of Beautiful Little Fools, a novel by Jillian Cantor, 2022.
Novelist Jillian Cantor’s 2022 book Beautiful Little Fools is a retelling of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, told from the point of view of the female characters. It’s an interesting idea and concept, although I had mixed feelings about the results.
Beautiful Little Fools covers the years 1917 to 1922, the years before the main action of The Great Gatsby takes place. The novel also covers the summer of 1922, and many of the same events that are detailed in The Great Gatsby.
The prequel material is interesting, as we observe Daisy Fay make the decision to marry the wealthy, and terrible, Tom Buchanan. Jordan Baker’s story is also expanded, and Cantor makes Jordan a lesbian, which isn’t totally a surprise. Jordan’s awakening to her sexuality is interesting to read.
The third narrator in Beautiful Little Fools is Myrtle Wilson’s sister, Catherine. She’s a minor character in Gatsby who is present for the scene in Tom’s apartment in New York City that he rents for his assignations with Myrtle. Catherine is expanded into quite a fascinating character, a suffragette who wants no part of a conventional life.
My problem with Beautiful Little Fools is with some of the plot points that have been changed from Gatsby. In Gatsby, Jordan tells Nick about how Daisy got drunk the night before she married Tom. Clutching a letter, presumably from Gatsby, Daisy had thrown the pearl necklace Tom had given her, worth $350,000, into a wastebasket. Daisy says to Jordan about the necklace, “Take ‘em downstairs and give ‘em back to whoever they belong to. Tell ‘em all Daisy’s change’ her mine.” (p.81) In Beautiful Little Fools, Daisy receives the pearl necklace and Gatsby’s letter less than an hour before she leaves for the church to marry Tom, thus affording her no chance to have any second thoughts about marrying Tom. This seemed to me to lessen the drama inherent in Daisy having second thoughts about her marriage.
Beautiful Little Fools also makes Jay Gatsby more of a creepy stalker and throws into question how Daisy actually feels about him when they reunite. I’m not going to claim that Jay and Daisy’s relationship is actually true love, but I would say that in The Great Gatsby she is clearly torn between Jay and Tom.
In The Great Gatsby, at lunch at the Buchanan’s house, Daisy tells Gatsby, “You always look so cool.” Nick’s narration tells us “She had told him that she loved him, and Tom Buchanan saw.” (p.125) Daisy also tells us in her own words that she loves Gatsby: “Oh, you want too much!...I love you now—isn’t that enough? I can’t help what’s past...I did love him once—but I loved you too.” (p.139-40) Daisy says nothing like this in Beautiful Little Fools.
In Beautiful Little Fools, all of the women become saints, and their rough edges have been sanded away. Daisy even wants to stop the car after Myrtle is killed, but Gatsby refuses. What I find interesting about Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby is that she is torn between Jay and Tom. It’s a messy and complicated situation.
Beautiful Little Fools is an interesting experiment in expanding the universe of The Great Gatsby, with mixed results, but it offers much food for thought.
