Blog 
Reviewed by Aaron Kreuter
The Great Gatsby, the new film by Australian director Baz Luhrmann, is one of the most anticipated literary adaptations of the year. Luhrmann’s colourful, overloaded style seems the perfect visual match for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s most famous novel, filled as it is with the glamour, glitz, and overabundance of the roaring twenties. Fans of Luhrmann’s other adaptation of an English-language classic — 1996′s Romeo + Juliet — will not be disappointed. And for those who want to see the story of Nick Carraway, Daisy Buchanan, and Jay Gatsby played out against a lavish backdrop of swirling, boozy parties, the camera zooming all over Long Island and Manhattan, set to a soundtrack of historical tunes and contemporary hip-hop, this is the movie for you.
Tobey Maguire plays the film’s narrator and protagonist, Nick Carraway, a young mid-westerner with hopes of making money off the stock market as a bonds salesman. Nick moves to the East and rents a small cottage in the newly affluent Long Island suburb of West Egg, where he will meet Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio), the exceedingly rich, party-throwing, secret-keeping character who gives the movie its title. Carey Mulligan is perfectly suited to Daisy Buchanan, Nick’s second cousin and Gatsby’s lost love, and Joel Edgerton steals every scene he is in as Daisy’s husband Tom Buchanan, the polo-playing, old-moneyed aristocrat and adulterer. The whole cast embodies the language and the extravagance, as well as the underlying longing and fear, that the novel so brilliantly captures.
A goat and a moose are working together this May, as Toronto theatre company One Little Goat presents the English-language world premiere of the play The Charge of the Expormidable Moose, by Quebec poet-playwright Claude Gauvreau. Widely considered to be Gauvreau’s masterpiece, the playful and provocative play (whose original French title is La charge de l’orignal épormyable) revolves around a poet who is mocked and envied by his fellow housemates — or are they fellow inmates?
The Best Place on Earth, Ayelet Tsabari’s debut collection of short stories, brings readers directly into the messy, human heart of life in Israel. Tsabari — an Israeli of Yemeni descent now living in Canada — tackles a wide number of issues, from the different social stratas of Tel Aviv to living in a country that is constantly at war, to the varied ways that Israelis of different ages, origins, and genders learn to deal with the daily realities of violence, segregation, and death.
Following a style similar to his previous three successful novels (All My Friends Are Superheroes, The Waterproof Bible, and The Tiny Wife), Toronto-based author Andrew Kaufman’s latest offering, Born Weird, is an upbeat, quirky work of magic realism. If you’re willing to be taken on a trip where some things fall just outside the realm of possibility, you will be delighted by this (mostly) uplifting read about a scattered family finding a way to be together again.
With thoughts of spring in the air, travel is on everyone’s wish list, but if, like me, you are homebound because of work and family, then virtual travel may be a viable alternative. Let your mind transport you to New York with me for this ongoing discussion series—the first event features Woody Allen’s iconic film Manhattan, and the next three sessions will feature three different New York–based books. To register in advance (preferred but not mandatory), call 416-633-5100.
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