Review- The Great Gatsby

It's taken me a surprisingly long while to read Gatsby- it lay in the bottom of my handbag, looking forlornly at me until today, where I took Baby to daycare, drove home and then lay in my weed collection lawn reading from cover to cover. 

Don't tell man-creature. He thinks I do the housework on Mondays. 

I'm not sure how I feel about The Great Gatsby. It's wonderfully written, the words fly off the page, swirl in front of you in their glitter, their shrieking, wild jazz and then vanish in a puff of smoke. It's a heyday book, a coming-of-age book, a study on marriage and fidelity. 

I say coming-of-age, but it can't really be considered that, in the strictest sense. Nick Carraway, after all, turns thirty and the rest of the characters range from late twenties to mid forties. Carraway does however, do a lot of maturing, mainly in cynicism. He slowly changes from a fresh, positive man into a darker, more sceptical sort. 
There's love and there's loss- whirling in freakish circles until the two come together in a hideous, ironic moment which consequently...well. That'd be a spoiler and honestly I'd rather you went and read the book, not just a review and then act like you have. Not the same!

F. Scott Fitzgerald's authorship takes this tale from something ordinary to something wonderful. The writing stays with you- even through the ephemeral qualities which see the story fly away on the wind as you read it. It somehow feels unreal. I'm sure there's been times in your lives where you've felt like something can't really be happening, it's just too fantastic for words. The Great Gatsby embodies this feeling- in the closing scenes you get the sense that this has all just been the strangest, most unreal thing that has ever or will ever occur in Nick Carraway's life. 

I enjoyed it. I really did. 
Read it in the grass, in the sun, with your cat sunning herself close by. You'll not regret it.