Classics: The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby
Rating: 3/5 
Buy or Borrow: Buy 
Source: Copy courtesy of the publisher! 

Invited to an extravagantly lavish party in a Long Island mansion, Nick Carraway, a young bachelor who has just settled in the neighbouring cottage, is intrigued by the mysterious host, Jay Gatsby, a flamboyant but reserved self-made man with murky business interests and a shadowy past. As the two men strike up an unlikely friendship, details of Gatsby’s impossible love for a married woman emerge, until events spiral into tragedy. 

Okay....so...I've heard mixed things about this classic, but I wanted to read it myself to form my own opinion, and upon finishing it...I'm just not sure how I feel. I enjoyed aspects of it, but there where other parts I didn't really like so much. 

I liked the look in to the time period that GG provided, The Diviners is one of my favourite books so I'm always intrigued to learn more about the period, and I enjoyed getting this view of it. I liked that the language and writing style made it easy to read. I liked Nick as our narrator, he provided an interesting view point of the whole Daisy/Gatsby thing that was going on, and I felt for him when he was trying to sort things at the end for Gatsby. I felt for Gatsby himself and I was gutted at what happens to him. I enjoyed the writing, the setting, and most of the characters, really I did. 

But...and there is a but, while I did get drawn in here and there, there where parts that didn't keep my attention. I'm sure I'm not the only person who didn't like Tom as a character, but I might be in a minority when I say I didn't like Daisy that much. I just didn't like her. She was so blah. And I don't get why everyone is so obsessed with Gatsby and Daisy and why they ship them so much. From my understanding of the novel, she married someone else because he was rich and Gatsby was not. Then she had her thing with Gatsby. Then she hit someone with a car in a kind of confusing scene, and then went back off with her husband leaving Gatsby to be set up by Tom for the blame. She didn't choose him nor did she even come to his funeral. Like I'm sure there's some huge in depth meaning to it all that I just didn't get, because sometimes I'm really thick when it comes to classics. But yeah. 

The edition itself was lovely, there weren't many notes needed as this is a short book, but I found the information on Gatsby and his wife fascinating! And also incredibly depressing/tragic at points. I love learning about the authors and the context to their novels from the time period they where writing in!