The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
SPOILERS Ahead. Consider yourself warned!!
I wanted to read it anyway, but now since the movie is coming out, I decided to push it up my Reading List. I know I would have pictured a different Jay, but now that I have seen the trailer...I can't wait to see Leo playing Gatsby. I didn't know Tobey Maguire was going to play Nick, but I guess he's the right choice. I haven't watched the older versions of this book, but I am eagerly waiting for May 2013 to watch this remake effort.
Nick Carraway is the narrator who has moved next door to a legendarily rich man who throws huge parties. Across the island lives his cousin Daisy who is married to Tom. He discovers that Tom is having an affair with a married woman living in New York. He strikes up an unlikely friendship with his neighbor, Jay Gatsby. Nick is going out with a professional golf player called Jordan Baker, who he met at Daisy's house. He is somewhat annoyed to find that Gatsby has a favor to ask him that Jordan will tell him about during their first date. He finds out that Gatsby used to know Daisy before she got married and wants to reconnect with her. He asks Nick to invite her to a tea party to his house so they can meet.
This book makes some hard statements about life in general. The first is about the fact that all of us are all alone in this world after all, there are no partners, no friends. Jay Gatsby gave wonderful parties where hundreds of people enjoyed themselves, most of them uninvited. Yet when Nick Carraway is undertaking his funeral arrangements, not one of those people agree to attend his funeral, even on his insistent invitations. Most prominently missing is the woman he loved, Daisy, for whom he agreed to take the blame of running over a woman in broad daylight on himself. The women's husband killed him for revenge, but Daisy chose that moment to start a new life with her rich husband and does not even send flowers to his grave.
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