The Great Gatsby
by F Scott Fitzgerald
This was another book which many of us had read in our younger years and found more to enjoy from re-reading.
There was general agreement that the writing was wonderful though some found the characters and story less engaging.
The novel is about the American Dream and the selfishness and corruption at its heart.
While many of the characters were evidently and irredeemably unsympathetic Gatsby and the narrator in particular provoked considerable discussion.
Was “honest” Nick a genuinely moral character and was his view of Gatsby as “worth the whole damn bunch put together” justified?
The novel incorporates real events and provides a commentary on contemporary life which finds a resonance in more recent history but at its heart is an enduring mystery, something glimpsed but not grasped.
What Nick “almost remembered was uncommunicable forever”.
NS July 2009
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