The Great Gatsby

I love this book. I’ve read it several times over the years and it’s always a pleasure to pick it up again. The characters tend to confuse the reader as they are enjoyable, yet mostly superficial, the storytelling is full of character and intricate prose, and the book shares the setting so well that I can almost hear the music of the roaring 20’s. Gatsby, an elusive neighbour, someone everyone whispers about, yet no one knows. The rumours fly but once his person is revealed, the disappointment weighs heavy on the reader-not much actually great about him. Like most he is a flawed human with not much character to speak of. This story is a whirlwind, and a very typical one: boy loves girl, loses girl, she marries someone else, he works to become wealthy with the sole purpose to win her back. It all turns to tragedy, with jealousy, death, and in the end, it was all for nothing. The only decent human in the story is the narrator Nick Carraway who does his utmost to see the decency in everyone. The rich, successful, elusive bachelor, with lavish parties full of the New York Elite, dies alone and no one attends the funeral. How tragic. But for some reason, I love it!

I bought this book last year, but I just hadn't got around to read it. But for my holiday, I rounded up 3-4 of those "must reads" that was waiting on the shelf and took off. And what a great read this was! I loved "The Great Gatsby" from the very first page.Written in the 1920'ies one would think that this novel would be outdated by now. But a book doesn't get the label "a great classic" for no good reason. Fitzgerald, with "The Great Gatsby", has written a novel with a timeless message.The story's narrator, Nick Carraway, is the neighbour to the novel's protagonist Jay Gatsby. We enter the story when Jay has transformed from being a poor officer to a self made millionaire. He is throwing fantastic parties every weekend on his mansion on Long Island. Lots of people, lit garden, swimming pool and the full nine yards. Gatsby is a self-invented person, no one really knows him, what he does, or where he's from, but they all come to his parties. One of the other protagonists, Daisy Buchanan is married to Tom, but Daisy used to go out with Jay Gatsby. Back then when he was a poor guy and a no-body. When Jay went to serve overseas, Daisy married Tom. Tom is an incredibly rich young man. Brutal, low moral, arrogant and you name it.. but extraordinary rich..So that's the scene setting for this novel. This book has everything, the (impossible) love story, money and wealth, greed, affairs, jealousy and obsessions. Fitzgerald's writing style is vivid and eloquent. Simply an elegant use of the language! His language reminds me of Hemingway, one of my other favourites. The different characters are extraordinary well developed. I especially liked the cynical narrator of the story, Nick Carraway.Fitzgerald has written one of the best books I have ever read. This is a short book, and I read it in 50-page gulps at the time. A great book, ready to be re-read any day!!PS. Make sure to get this edition, as it has a great preface written by Matthew Bruccoli. The preface contains valuable information about the author and background information on the story itself. Read the preface first, you will benefit from it.

This review relates to the first Scribner trade paperback edition, 2003, of the corrected text authorized by the estate of the author. It includes a preface and notes by Matthew J. Bruccoli, a publisher's afterward, a drawn map of the story site and a brief Fitzgerald biography.The green light in THE GREAT GATSBY is probably the most frequently cited example of "objective correlative" in fiction. T. S. Eliot coined the phrase objective correlative for the author's device of describing an object so that it reveals an emotional state, but without explicitly linking the object and the emotion in the narrative.Fitzgerald mentioned the green light three times in the novel. On page 26, when Nick is observing Gatsby gazing across the bay between East Egg and West Egg, Nick involuntarily glances seaward and distinguishes "nothing except a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock." On page 98, Gatsby says to Daisy, "You always have a green light that burns at the end of your dock." Finally, on page 189, at the end of the story, Nick the narrator tells us "Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic* future that year by year recedes before us." By then, the reader understands that the green light correlates to Gatsby's distracted longing for Daisy.*In his afterword, Mr. Bruccoli claims that Fitzgerald purposely used "orgastic" instead of "orgiastic." The Encarta dictionary accepts orgastic, but not the Microsoft Word spell checker or my WordWeb Thesaurus.For those interested in a timeline, do a Google search on: "last day of summer," 1922, Gatsby. The results should be two hits, both good timelines. The one on geocities has at least one error, however; it has Cody dieing in 1910 instead of five years later.I found 113 proper names of persons, some only given names, some only surnames in the story. Of these, 74 are names of Gatsby's guests listed on pages 65 - 67. Fitzgerald mentions only two of those guests later in the story. He does not give "Owl Eyes" a proper name, but he figures as a significant character.

I have been meaning to read this classic for a while, and I must say that I truly enjoyed it! It's a great escape into the past, with some interesting characters and a peak into the fascinating life back then! I found it hard to put the book down, and I highly recommend it!