Fiction Review
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s poignant and over-analyzed tale of betrayal, uncertainty, mindless, unreasonable love and pretenses has been on many western curriculum since it was published. Is it really as good as everyone says it is, or is it just popular among elitist literary critics?
Meet Nick Carraway, our slightly dull (compared to his peers) narrator. Nick is a writer; he is observant and intelligent and comes from a mixed background that allows him to mingle with ease with the rich snobs on the fictional island of West Egg, New York. It is here that Nick has chosen to start his adult life, while he tries to build a career in the finance industry, like a good American boy. Nick has been invited to the home of the mysterious Jay Gatsby for a party, a lavish over the top affair where everyone seems to know each other, yet nobody knows one another. Nick has seen Gatsby at night, peering out over the river from the end of his dock, yet has never seen his face, only heard salacious gossip about how the man made his fortune.
Gatsby and Nick soon become good friends, a kinship owed, perhaps, to Nicks’ married cousin Daisy, with whom Gatsby has been infatuated for years. It is this desperate attraction that is the making of Gatsby, and unfortunately, the destruction of an empire he has so energetically built.
Rather than analyse the themes of the novel, how about answering the question that needs answering: Is it a good book? Well, yes. It’s the most engaging of Fitzgerald’s novels, easiest to read and get involved in. The characters are well designed and well described and Fitzgerald’s visual imagery is on point. It is not difficult to interpret who the characters are, what motivates them and what relevance they have to the plot. He plot itself follows a tabloid worthy storyline, so elegantly built that you don’t really notice. Is it a difficult book to read? Potentially. The use of language and references to people, places and language that no longer exist in the modern world can be a bit of a head scratcher and can pull you out of the overall story.
The story is magical and poignant and if you know a lot about the Fitzgeralds and the lost generation then this is a perfect novel to describe that loss, that melancholia, through drama generated by allusions of the authors own, shallow personal problems. It has really good re- read potential and is really unique in what it is.
