The Great Gatsby

My personal choice for The Great American Novel - with an emphasis on the American. This is, as narrator Nick Carraway notes, a story of the West after all.

Fitzgerald's masterpiece captures the American dream at a point in time, and yet in a way that resonates down to us today. It remains the most accessible of the classics. I can't recall enjoying re reading a book more. Just a delight. Every chapter, every page, is luminous and heart breaking.

I returned to the book, haunted in many ways, not so much by Gatsby as by Carraway, the narrator, who happens to be in the perfect position to observe the Gatsby/Daisy Buchanan love story, as a relative of Daisy and a neighbor of Gatsby's.

It was his sense of being an outsider looking in, or being more observer than participant in events, with which I most cloely identified. In many ways I still think of it as Nick's book, and this re reading confirmed the notion.

I read this book because I'm trying to read a lot of the classics on the various "Top 100" book lists floating around out there. This book is on most of the lists so I added it to my list of books to read. Having never seen a movie adaptation either, I knew absolutely nothing about the story before I read it. I recognize that this book is beautifully written. I was amazed at the way Fitzgerald created art with words. However, the story itself did nothing for me. I realize that it was a story about shallow people living shallow lives but I finished it with the thought "Is that all there is?" I wanted somebody to get some comeuppence or something. I'll rate it a four for the art of the words alone.

This is not a bad book but it doesn't have the compelling story to me. I found the author very capable of crafting words, but I did not sense a "I can't wait to know" moments. Of course like all classics you have to over look the vernacular. The author also used a few words that I was not familiar with. This would make this book better for a more sophisticated reader. I am interested in reading other reviews by more learned people to see just how much I might of missed.

Set in the Roarin' Twenties, this unforgetable classic is a romance as well as the story of Jay Gatsby. F. Scott Fitzgerald told the story in a unique way, through the voice of Nick Carraway, an impartial aquaintace of both Gatsby and Daisy.

Details of the golden era come alive in vivid descriptions of fashion, music, and decor, carrying the reader back to a time of bootleg liquor and the newly invented automobile. Jay Gatsby lives in a luxurious mansion. He sometimes stands on the beach in his backyard gazing across the water at a green light marking the home Daisy Buchanan, the love of his life who is, unfortuately, married to someone else. Daisy's two-timing husband Tom is not impressed with Mr. Gatsby.

As the tale unfolds, we see that Jay Gatsby is quite a different man than the most people think. Beautifully written, I highly recommend this classic romance.

Deceptively simple...beautiful language, memorable story and characters, many layers...i've read this three times. very quick, enjoyable read. learn something new every time.