Book Review - The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald

By Elizabeth Joseph
Nick Carraway makes a living in New York in bond business. He happens to be living in a quite affluent area though his house is a modest place. There is a mansion next door to him which belong to Mr Gatsby. Mr Gatsby is a very popular figure who gives big parties almost every weekend and most people in town attend it. During one of these parties, Nick meets Mr Gatsby in person and gets a special liking to him. The rest of the story is about Mr Gatsby and his life as Nick narrates it.

Mr Gatsby and Nick's cousin Daisy Buchanan was in love 5 years back, when Mr Gatsby was a poor officer. Poverty claimed Daisy from him and now he has come back to claim her after making millions of money. Daisy is married to the rich Tom Buchanan, who doesn't care much about her. The whole aim of Mr Gatsby's life is to get Daisy back and entice her with all the wealth that he has accumulated in the past years.

Thoughts

This book disappointed me a lot as my expectations was very much high due to the popularity of this book. That was the reason for getting this book. This book is supposed to an epic romance novel, but I found it more or less the story of an infatuated person. Otherwise, how could I explain the absence of Daisy towards the climax of the story. There is nothing much in the story other than what the narrator tells about Jay Gatsby. Some how the "great" part of the title doesn't look convincing from the story. The mistress of Tom Buchanan and her husband adds to some of this confusion. Probably the only thing that stands out is how Tom steer things to work out the way he wanted by his crude thinking.

As an young reader, I was not able to appreciate much the prose for which this book by Scott Fitzgerald is famous for. This particular edition (as you see in the picture above) is supposed to be the exact version as Fitzgerald wanted it to be published.