From the Bookshelf of Never too Late to Read Classics…

Gone with the Wind

Margaret Mitchell

Start date: April 1, 2019

Finish date: June 30, 2019

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What Members Thought

May 18, 2023 ForestGardenGal rated it liked it

Shelves: genre-fiction, classics-published-50-years-ago, theme-chic-lit, genre-historical-fiction, location-georgia, 1929-1939-great-depression, pulitzer-prize-winners

Troubling. Disturbing. More tragedy than Romance.

Is it epic? In size, definitely. In literary quality... maybe.
Is it a Romance? Not even remotely.

It is definitely written from the perspective of an old Southern Aristocrat culture, and says some things that today come across as undeniably wrong- pro slavery and sexist. At the same time, it gives a startling and coherent explanation of how our country got things so very wrong.

Rant...(view spoiler) Troubling. Disturbing. More tragedy than Romance.

Is it epic? In size, definitely. In literary quality... maybe.
Is it a Romance? Not even remotely.

It is definitely written from the perspective of an old Southern Aristocrat culture, and says some things that today come across as undeniably wrong- pro slavery and sexist. At the same time, it gives a startling and coherent explanation of how our country got things so very wrong.

Rant...(view spoiler) (end rant)

Back to the book...
The main characters are horrible. You really want to like them. They are written so well, and their circumstances are so devastating that you need them to finally get things right... To catch a real break and achieve some real lasting happiness. But no, this is not that story. The only way this is defined as a romance, really, is in the literary definition of expounding upon the cycle of life and death- that it definitely does. But the characters are destined for tragedy ultimately. This may be a romance on the same tragic level as Romeo and Juliet. Not gonna end well.

As compared to the movie... This book is so much better than the movie it isn't even a serious question. The movie stripped the story down to it's most basic elements. And it was still too long to sit through.

Yes, the book is long, but even the book seems somewhat edited in the final two parts, particularly in Part 5 where suddenly you take random and sudden hops through time with no graceful preludes or soft landings, she just drops you from the end of one paragraph into a completely different scenario and a much later date at the beginning of the next paragraph. This is disconcerting after having spent 10 (or many more) hours reading, you don't want a sloppy hurried finish, yet that is exactly what Ms. Mitchell has left us with.

Am I glad I finally read the entire book? Absolutely. Will I ever read it again? Absolutely not.

R for sexual content, violence including graphic war scenarios, language, violence against women, domestic violence, and strong racial content and derogatory language. ...more

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