Move aside Gatsby, it’s Nick Carraway’s turn.
Nick – the blurb
Before Nick Carraway moved to West Egg and into Gatsby s world, he was at the center of a very different story one taking place along the trenches and deep within the tunnels of World War I.
Floundering in the wake of the destruction he witnessed first-hand, Nick delays his return home, hoping to escape the questions he cannot answer about the horrors of war. Instead, he embarks on a transcontinental redemptive journey that takes him from a whirlwind Paris romance doomed from the very beginning to the dizzying frenzy of New Orleans, rife with its own flavor of debauchery and violence.
Stepping out from the shadows
It’s a fascinating concept. Take a book, a classic even, one that has been made into an Oscar winning film, then write a prequel. But not about the man, write a one about his sidekick, his shadow, his narrator. That is the idea behind Nick. I have read Great Gatsby although it was some time ago so my memory of Nick is dim. Didn’t he work on Wall Street? Wasn’t he Daisy’s cousin? I’ll tell you now, non of that matters as Nick is very, very different to the champagne filled parties of Gatsby. If you’re looking for more of the same then you’re going to be disappointed.
From the Trenches to Long Island
I don’t know what I was expecting when I first started reading Nick but as he headed over to France and the horrors of The Great War were revealed I was surprised. It felt more like Birdsong with the trench warfare and the doomed romance. As the book progressed it seemed Nick moved further and further from the Great Gatsby lifestyle and I truly wondered how Farris Smith would get him to that house in West Egg. He does, but it feels like a bit of a jump. I think that was the book’s biggest problem. It was a really good book about a man tormented by the horrors of war who just needed to find some sort of inner peace. But it wasn’t a prequal to Great Gatsby. For me there needed to be more connection, more joining up of the two.
The pub’s run dry
If you can get over the Gatsby hurdle then you are in for a really good read. The France section was particularly moving, although the Frenchtown section does seem to flag slightly. I would have liked to have read more about Nick’s parents and I now feel like I need a sequel to Gatsby to see if Nick ever finds his corner of happiness. It was towards the end where the book most caught me – the parallels to today’s situation when Nick reflects on the impending prohibition. “Who the hell thinks it’s a good idea to tell a whole country who just got done fighting their ass off in another land that you can’t sit down and have a damn drink?” To quote the recently read Claudia Winkleman, ‘Quite’.
Nick by Michael Farris Smith will be published in February 2021.
