I read this really good book years ago and I cannot find it anywhere! It starts out with this girl buying drugs at some random bar and then she passes out while walking home or where ever. She wakes up in this guys house and they end up becoming close. His family is rich and he starts to help her out, she moves in with him since her father is abusive. Her father may or may not of died towards the end. I am pretty positive that is a YA book.
There is a type of young woman we have all either known or been; who worships at the alter of the Romantic; plays old border ballads on pennywhistle, recorder, or hammer dulcimer; tacks a hand-lettered sign reading MAGIC IS AFOOT on her dormitory room door; reads the Tarot for friends and The White Goddess for pleasure; and treasures a hundred obscure books by measure of how close they come to an ideal world in which gypsies and scarecrows, old marbles and long skirts, elves, quilts, candles, hot chocolate with cinnamon, feathered caps, rainy days, and snug houses with big fireplaces are part of a single, inexpressibly significant enterprise.
“And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.”
Many people are going to disagree with the rating that I’ve given Fitzgerald’s classic novel, but it was the title of ‘classic’ that was ultimately its downfall. It was a case of people hyperbolising its greatness and saying it was a timeless, unique story that was beautifully written. Whilst I can’t deny any of these statements in the bigger picture, what I can say is that just because a book was made into a movie doesn’t mean the story itself is all that great - something which was used to try and convince me that I was going to love this book. I’m not going to completely discredit what this book has given to the literary canon and what it has given to other people because everyone is allowed to love something but, sadly, The Great Gatsby just wasn’t for me.
I do have to admit that the real reason I picked this book up was for a literature course but that didn’t mean that I didn’t look forward to reading it. There were so many people that I knew that said this book was good and that they loved reading it, some even compared it to the magnificence of To Kill A Mockingbird. As someone who thoroughly enjoyed that novel it made me all the more excited to move forwards to study this book. Sadly, in many ways, I was let down.
I do have to admit that the reason I first picked up The Great Gatsby was because it was a set text on my Literature degree course and that often could be enough to ruin someone’s opinions about the book. That being said, I was really looking forward to reading it. With how positive people had responded to it and how big of a hit the Leonardo Dicaprio movie had been, I was sure that I was going to fall in love with it to. If people were willing to compare it to the magnificence of Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird then how was there any potential for me to not love this book?
Whilst this isn’t a comparison between the two books I do feel that it is necessary to compare the characters in each respective text. Characters are the driving force of a story, the protagonist is one that we are meant to trust, possibly admire, even fall in love with them. The Finch family took me in and I was excited to see their development, to watch Scout learn about racism and develop into someone that saw beyond skin colour and conservative values. Nick as a narrator just didn’t engage me. I couldn’t connect with his voice, his point of view and the main reason for that is because I didn’t feel compelled to love Jay Gatsby. He’s described as such a prolific man on the periphery of a story but it felt forced. Maybe this is how it’s meant to be. Maybe this is the big topic that makes everyone love him. He’s not this ‘great’ man but just an ordinary one that goes to great lengths, fakes an identity and almost stalks Daisy just because he loves her.
The idea of a love story between Gatsby and Daisy is one that I didn’t like either. Not only has Gatsby lied about his entire life but Daisy picks and chooses constantly. Gatsby is a man desperate for the woman that he loves whereas Daisy let’s Gatsby take the heat for the murder of an innocent woman. If she truly loved him the way it was presented then I don’t see how she could so easily let that slide. Even that, with the small prologue presented by Nick she doesn’t seem to share a thought back to the man. It annoyed me. It annoyed me a lot. Daisy seems to be too young to understand what love is. As a one syllable word it’s easy enough to throw around, but whether she really means it is a completely different story. When the reappearance of a lost lover appears she plays him for money and friendship. There isn’t any romantic feeling left with her.
I wasn’t compelled by Gatsby’s love for Daisy, I wasn’t reaching out for a green light hoping that two people who have no business really being together end up together. Gatsby lied about his entire existence, a man who is desperate for love to the point where he can’t even love himself. Daisy is a woman that can’t make a decision, leads a poor man on whilst being married to another and inevitably lets Gatsby make the ultimate sacrifice to prove his love for her that had been so clear from the start. And she isn’t helped by the prologue presented by Nick. Even after his death she doesn’t seem to spare him a thought. Maybe it is a naivety, maybe she is too young to understand just how much Jay was willing to give up for her. Throwing the word love around can be so easy but did she really know what she was saying? How much weight a word can have to a person? Daisy appeared, to me, to be someone who didn’t want love. She never loved Gatsby and she probably doesn’t love Tom. One thing that was obvious was that she loved status and that was her goal from the first page.
I can appreciate why people loved this book. I can understand why a lot of people do but it just isn’t for me. Maybe if I had read it in my own time, outside of it being an imperative piece of reading then I would have found myself enjoying it a lot more. Perhaps it was the constant boasting of how good the book was, about how perfect the story was, that made me have such high hopes that ultimately couldn’t be met. If you enjoyed this book great, if you didn’t then hopefully you find something that you can enjoy. I won’t be recommending this book to people despite how much of a classic it is. Just because it’s a classic doesn’t mean you have to love it.
