CBR18 BINGO: using the Free Space to replace Joker
I hated this when I read it in high school. That was so long ago that I don’t recall why, but my guess is that 16-year-old Tracy had Strong Feelings™ about how books were supposed to end and objected to how this one ended.
I’m not sure what made me try it again, but I’m glad I did. I really liked it!
Um. I’m just not sure why. This is actually a challenging book to rate and review because it really is greater than the sum of its parts. I did like the prose, and there’s some dry humor at the beginning that I appreciated, but beyond that, I’m not sure what was so compelling about it that I wanted to keep reading.
The narrator is Nick, who is a maybe unreliable narrator and more of an observer than anything else. I think I was fairly indifferent to him, and I actively disliked, to varying degrees, most of the other characters. This includes Gatsby. There isn’t a lot of plot, and I didn’t particularly care about any themes Fitzgerald was exploring. I mean yes, eat the rich, but beyond that I wasn’t particularly invested in or attentive to the themes. Plus there’s some period-typical racism and antisemitism that I could have done without.
So what did I like? Got me. But I did. I wish I could say more. This isn’t a very helpful review is it? It could probably be whittled down to “I liked this book. For . . . reasons. The end.” I gave it 3.5 stars, which somehow feels like both less and more than the book deserves.
I also haven’t said what it’s about. Do I need to? I don’t even really know what it’s about. People say it’s about Gatsby’s love for Daisy and maybe about his being stuck in the past. And that’s part of it. But it mostly seems to be Nick rubbing shoulders with wealthy people for several months, and Gatsby is one of the easiest to rub shoulders with because he lives right next door.
Anyway, I liked the book. I recommend it. For . . . reasons. The end.
