TLDR/OPinion: 6/10
Hosseini's harrowing microcosmic tale of ​the wider degeneration of his native country, Afghanistan, tells the story of its oppression and corruption at the hands of other nations and terrorists groups from the unique perspective of 2 children. The book travels through history and across countries, a tale of betrayal, heartbreak, inequality and redemption.
Book Reviews and Analysis
The Great Gatsby (1925)
Author
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Score
8/10
Image by Camilla Jones
The Great Gatsby (1925)
BLURB: Nick Carraway narrates the lives of his fellow American in the Jazz Age as the fly on the wall in the life of Jay Gatsby and his lavish lifestyle. Acting Swtizerland between self-made riches and inherited, Nick's relatively modest character and lifestyle is the neutral between to extremes.
Be ready to await complex and deluded love triangles, ostentatious parties, drive-bys, inordinate drinking and housewife shut-ins, this relatively short novel packs a punch.
REVIEW: Fitzgerald's American dream is a lavishly built construct with hollow, teetering foundations. An excellent insight into the paradox of wealth and popularity; his tale conveys the Jazz Age as one where everyone is in love with everyone but nobody cares for anyone. The book utterly lacks catharsis - prominent characters fade into the background and the action is elusive and sparsely described at times - but perhaps this is partially the charm of a book about nothing. Nothing happens to the bad guys but also nothing happens to the good - it is remarkably un-great which provides infinite talking points from the author. I had to give this an extra .5 merely upon the realisation that nothing in this book is 'great', there is no closure - only bathos, no justice - only death, truths remain undisclosed, lovers remain separated. It is perhaps by writing an entirely unsatisfying novel that Fitzgerald cornered his niche.
Something is lost for Carraway though - perhaps his flatness is designed to foil Gatzby's grandiosity but I think there is something missing in his characterisation. Furthermore questions of antisemitism are provoked through this reading.
ANALYSIS: The author has a unique ability to leave you questioning: 'how 'great' was Gatsby?'. Is it his ability to build something, an aura, a reputation, a concrete wealth, from nothing? Or is it this nothingness, the lack of lineage, flat characterisation and intangibles what undermines his greatness? His perception of his popularity, proven empty at the funeral; his wealth doesn't follow him to the grave; neither does the love of his life, whose lack of any remote farewell and disappearance makes the ending starkly desolate and bathetic.
Cleverly only those anonymised or on the periphery of characterisation are depicted as remotely human and not apathetic. Even Nick Carraway appears a voyeur to his own story which is subsumed in the drama of Gatzby's.
THEMES:
Wealth
Intrigue
Upper echelons of society
Romance
Infidelity