The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” Fitzgerald’s own tormented voice can be heard in this lyrical novel for which he is best known. It is incredibly evocative in its description of a wealthy playboy who comes back to reclaim his past love, at that point married to the brutish and unfaithful Tom Buchanan. Fitzgerald easily captures the poignancy of lost love and plays it off against the vigour of the 1920s Jazz Age, allowing the glittering backdrop to enhance the penetrating loneliness of the book. It is set in the 1920s on Long Island, where narrator Nick Carraway watches as the tragic yet inevitable events unfold.
Jay Gatsby is a fascinating figure: mysterious, broken and established as an icon of illusory glory. Fitzgerald shows the apparantly alluring society to be only a superficial game. Gatsby is a Midas figure: he provides legendary parties, exudes charisma and charm, yet the thing he most desperately wants eludes him.
Fitzgerald’s narrative often reads like poetry and is crafted with such superb precision that you find yourself turning over phrases in your head, marvelling at how he can describe the seemingly indescribable. The understated description of character is balanced with minute detail of place and atmosphere. It is difficult to judge the characters. Instead you feel a kind of pity, and after the first reading there is a sense of loss, though quite for what, it is difficult to say.
