The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

You guys asked, I listened! Thank you for voting on my Instagram story (@South_African_Hippie) for the next Classic book to read and review for Classics month!

I started this book with great anticipation as I've never read any of Fitzgerald's work, truthfully, I've mostly read about his life. I haven't even watched the film adaptation of this story in order to enjoy the book on its own. As with To Kill a Mockingbird I knew there would be a different writing and language style than what I'm used to because of the time difference, but this particular novel really took the cake. Read on to find out how 🠟

The Main Plot:

This is a small, tragic tale of a man named Jay Gatsby who once fell madly in love with a woman named Daisy when they were both young. Jay was sent to war and when he returned 5 years later, Daisy was married to another man, Tom.

Jay uses wealth he allegedly acquires through illicit bootlegging to buy a mansion of epic proportions just across the bay from Daisy's house in which he throws extravagant parties all the time, where, 'Nobody is invited but everybody shows up', in the hopes that one day, Daisy would show up.

She doesn't, so Jay befriends his neighbour, Nick (our narrator), who just so happens to be Daisy's cousin, and asks him to invite Daisy (sans Tom) and himself so they may finally reconnect and run off into the sunset together, righting the wrongs of their past.

Jay and Daisy reconnect and fall for one another once again - after some drama between Jay and Tom, a hit and run murder and everybody switching cars for some bizarre reason - Daisy backs out of leaving Tom and Jay gets shot by a local man (Wilson) who is convinced Jay killed his wife in the hit and run (Spoiler alert: it was Daisy who killed her while driving Jay's car).

Anyway, nobody shows up for Jay's funeral except for his neighbour and his father, not even Daisy who claimed to love him so, which considering how many claimed to adore him and would turn up to his many parties, it was quite saddening. And that's the story, but there is so much more to this book... So let's get into it😁

The Highs and the Lows:

➖ The language style of this book was incredibly confusing. I have to admit that I had to Google a lot of stuff just to grasp some context. Lots of things were left up in the air, nothing seemed particularly written in stone. I wasn't even entirely sure if Wilson was the one to kill Jay or if Tom led Wilson to Jay's house and then killed them both because both men ended up dead but the general understanding is the Wilson was the shooter. Still, I prefer these things to be spelled out.

➕ This book highlighted how many people are greedily lusting after the wrong things in life: fame, fortune and the like. Plenty hung around Jay hoping to share in his limelight, but Jay himself didn't care too much for all the wealth and celebrity status he held - he had everything that everyone else wanted and he would throw it all away just to have Daisy back. Pretty wholesome if you ask me and not a bad message to be giving to people currently what with all these influencers acting like followers are the be all and end all of life.

➖ Some parts of this story have so much description and detail and others had none whatsoever. For example, there is two and a half pages in this book dedicated to listing the names of people who came to Jay's house one summer (literally an entire chapter of Nick listing the people he noticed coming and going from Jay's house, I wish I was kidding) which made no sense to me. The names didn't come back to mean anything later, so it seemed to be a whole chapter that could've been summarised with the sentence, 'I kept count one summer of all those who came and went to Gatsby's parties, and the total was over one hundred.' For real. It could've been that easy.

➕ I came to sincerely enjoy Jay's character, so much so that the ending was quite sad for me; it really bummed me out that almost nobody came to Jay's funeral - it shows that 'good time' friends lack true substance and to keep your eyes open so as not to let those sorts of filler people into your inner circle to waste your time; they aren't worth it. I've had people like this around before and my life has only ever become lighter when I don't allow them too close any longer.

➖ This book feels, to me, like a really beautiful picture that's 1x1cm, with a 50x50cm of a boring frame around it. The first half of the book is full of lovely language and descriptions, but it doesn't add much (if anything) to the main plot - at least it didn't for me. It took me until Jay finally asking Nick to invite Daisy over and explaining their shared backstory for me to finally grasp at a plot. Before that, I was reading and reading and wondering where on earth it was all going. After Jay explained so much in order to ask such a tiny favour, Nick actually asks another party, 'Did I have to know all of that for him to ask such a little thing?' and I couldn't. Agree. More.

Unfortunately, if Fitzgerald's other works are similar to this piece, I won't be reaching for another. This isn't to say that his work isn't good, I'm sure it is and I'm just not used to reading this style of writing and this use of language, but reading this book gave me the same sensation I get when I'm watching the long credit scene at the end of a Marvel film: knowing I'm not going to remember any of these names and awaiting the payoff at the end in the form of a great teaser; the story of Jay and Daisy is actually all right but there's so much noise surrounding it not pertaining that I was bored throughout a lot of it.

I'm going to have to give this one a 3\5 😟 ⭐⭐⭐☆☆

I really wanted to like this book. It's a decent Classic and I enjoyed the main story when I got to it, but so much of this book was white noise and parts of the main story itself was confusing and not solidly explained in my opinion. It's a tough nut to crack, but if you're up for it, go for it.👍

I'm onto the final book now, Little Women! I've been told this is a great Classic to read and it's on so many TBR-before-you-die sort of lists that I couldn't resist. I'm so excited to start it and to bring you another review next week!

So let me know what you think of The Great Gatsby! Have you read this book? What did you think? Have you watched the film? How did it compare? Are you going to give this read a go? Let me know in the comments and I'll see you on my Instagram at @South_African_Hippie to poll, share and discuss!

Love and Light,

Melissa x