The Great Gatsby

                                               THE GREAT GATSBY
                                                       book review


"Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had." this is the opening quote of the book and I think it says a lot about it since the main character, Jay Gatsby doesn't come from a wealthy family but he still found a way to make his way up to the top. He is very famous for his parties and people talk a lot about him since they don't know much about him and most of the time they criticize him. The story is written from an outsider's point of view, unlike most books, which is really interesting because you do not know the past or thoughts of the main character. F. Scott Fitzgerald created Nick for this story to link the characters in the book together, as Nick is Gatsby's neighboor and Daisy's cousin, it is through him that we meet all the characters. It is the story of a man who comes back from World War I and tries to get back with his pre-war sweetheart. It may seem like a cliché love story at first but as the story unfolds you learn new things about the characters and realise there is more to it than what meets the eye. It is a story about the American dream. In chapter 6 we learn about Jay Gatsby's less than wealthy past, which makes him seem like someone in pursuit of the American Dream but we also know very quickly that Gatsby is very wealthy, that he is doing well in life. That is when the love story comes in, Daisy (his sweetheart) would be his personification of the American Dream. She was his before but now it is as if he is running after her, trying to fix things when she is out of his reach, married.
It is overall a good book, easy to read and well written. The author F.Scott Fitzgerald is an American novelist, also a short story writer, who uses diction, syntax, rhetorical strategies such as similes (e.g: "there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines"). I would recommend the book to someone who is looking for a book fairly easy to read and not to long but which still has good content and stays really interesting the whole time.
There has been several cinema adaptations of this book the most recent one sould be The Great Gatsby with Leonardo DiCaprio as Jay Gatsby from 2013.