Book Synopsis
Genre: Fiction, Romance
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s third book, stands as the supreme achievement of his career. This exemplary novel of the Jazz Age has been acclaimed by generations of readers. The story of the fabulously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan, of lavish parties on Long Island at a time when The New York Times noted “gin was the national drink and sex the national obsession,” it is an exquisitely crafted tale of America in the 1920s.
The Great Gatsby is one of the great classics of twentieth-century literature.
Review
A book is always read slightly different when you have to study it. When you look into a book like The Great Gatsby in a lot of detail, you’ll realise just how much of a genius Fitzgerald is. With the film coming up, the cast is definitely going to draw a lot of people who’ve never read the book to the film so if you haven’t, you should definitely read the book beforehand!
The frailty of dreams and their becoming a reality is a dangerous thing in this novel. Incarnating dreams into people is even more dangerous. The way this novel is structured is genuinely a masterpiece. I remember this moment when I was studying time in the novel and thinking “Holy shit, this guy is awesome.”
The way the past, present and future feed into one another and collide makes you wonder, can one create the past? Nope. Should one try to create the past? Probably not; the past is past for a reason but Gatsby does everything to re-live this one moment in time where, for him, life was at its best.
This novel shows how problematic it is to have fulfilled your dreams too early; especially when those dreams lie in wealth. What do you do when you’ve made your millions? What do you do when you’ve already done everything you wanted? The Great Gatsby is full of dried up, young souls with nothing better to do. And so, love and hope in The Great Gatsby are destructive. Relationships and love are misplaced and mismatched into disasters. This book really shows how corruptible desire can be and the extremities unrequited love can create.
Read for an insight into The Jazz Age, life after a generation of lost souls to the Great War and a good old story about broken hearts and broken dreams.
Oh and I hate Daisy Buchanan with a passion.
