The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

First edition 1925 (sourced Wikipedia)

"In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since."

Decadence, adultery, narcissism, vast wealth, idealistic love, betrayal, death, revenge, murder; a vast array of scope for a novel, and Fitzgerald delivers an impacting tale in The Great Gatsby.  Nick Carraway, a young man from the Midwest, begins to form a relationship with his neighbour, the wealthy Jay Gatsby and eventually learns of Gatsby's connection to his cousin, Daisy.  Daisy, who is married to Tom Buchanan, while casually enduring her husband's adulterous relationships, has led a very vapid and frivilous life amongst the society scene of the 1920s.  When Gatsby reappears in her life, their rekindled romance sets off a series of tragic events, the repercussions reverberating through the lives of all the characters.

Gatsby, the created man; Gatsby, the idealist, a man who is love with an image that formed five years earlier, and that he has nurtured through time.  Did I understand his infatuation with Daisy?  No, but I sympathized with it.  He had grown up isolated, broke relations with his parents reasonably early on and had no one in his life to set a good example that he could draw from.  Daisy was perhaps the only person whom he had loved, and so he loved her passionately, unrealistically and terminally.  And he realized, that he would need money to keep her love.  When Nick Carraway says to him, "She's [Daisy's] got an indiscreet voice …. It's full of ----", Gatsby answers, "Her voice is full of money."  Even though he knows what she is like, and has known from the beginning, is he desperately trying to hold on to his fantasy of her ---- this illusion of perfection --- because he has nothing else?  Gatsby fails to examine any of the decisions he makes in his life ……… perhaps he truly believes that money can buy him happiness and cannot see the superficiality of the life and people with whom he surrounds himself.  His life is built on illusion and throughout the novel we hear the faint ticking of the bomb that will shatter his misperceptions.

The Plaza Hotel in the early 1920s
(source Wikipedia)

As for Nick Carraway, I felt uncomfortable with him as the narrator.  He went to unusual lengths at the beginning of the novel to establish his credibility with the reader, and if his observations are to be believed, he was the only one in the novel with any compassion, discernment or standards.  While the society he moves in is portrayed in a harsh, decadent, unforgiving light, he is the angel that hovers above it, the star that shines through it.  He is the only one who cares for Gatsby, the only one with a moral compass.  I had a difficult time buying into his golden-boy image.

The tragedy of this novel is a wasted life.  In spite of the grandeur, in spite of his fame and money, Gatsby left no real lasting effect on anyone, other than perhaps Nick Carraway.  He buried himself behind a persona, only emerging to be drawn towards the flame of Daisy and then perishing, as his wings brushed the heat of her consuming light.

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

The Black Arrow by Robert Louis Stevenson

"On a certain afternoon, in the late springtime, the bell upon Tunstall Moat House was heard ringing at an unaccustomed hour."

On my goodness, where do I start?

The Black Arrow is set during the War of the Roses and follows Dick (Richard) Shelton, a young man who discovers that his guardian, Sir Daniel Brackley, is actually responsible for his father's death.  Dick sets out, not only to seek revenge, but to rescue the beautiful Joanna Sedley from his guardian's clutches.  In his quest, he gets embroiled in "The War of the Roses," the battle between the House of York and the House of Lancaster for the English throne and poor Dick must decide which side deserves his loyalty.  An interesting cast of characters assist or impede him on his journeys until he is able to overcome his struggles: win his bride, gain justice for his father and receive a knightship in the bargain.

On one hand, the novel is ripe with the promise of a wonderful adventure: a handsome young man, a romance, an historical battle, power struggles, revenge, trust, loyalty, and betrayal.  However, the manner in which Stevenson crafted this novel is rather bumbling.  There is little introduction to the setting; the characters are plunked into the story with a very brief background; perilous situation after perilous situation is fired rapidly at the reader with sketchy development; and the characters' actions are contrived to move the plot along rather than with the intent to build strong, plausible characters.

For example, in one particular scene, on the drop of a coin, Dick decides to steal a ship (which no one really knows how to sail), attacks a well-fortified castle, with the result that he barely escapes with his life and ends up shipwrecked.  The skipper from whom he stole the ship is ruined, and it is only when Dick sees the culmination of his actions that he feels any remorse.  A matter of the ends justifying the means, which never sits well with me.

Stevenson himself disliked the book, describing it as "tushery" or the affected use of archaic language. The fact that he wrote it while in the grip of a debilitating case of influenza might act as an excuse for his sub-par creation:

"The influenza has busted me a good deal; I have no spring, and am headachy. So, as my good Red Lion Counter begged me for another Butcher's Boy-I turned me to-what thinkest 'ou?-to Tushery, by the mass! Ay, friend, a whole tale of tushery. And every tusher tushes me so free, that may I be tushed if the whole thing is worth a tush. The Black Arrow: A Tale of Tunstall Forest is his name: tush! a poor thing!"

Personally I did not have a huge issue with his use of language, it was more the fact that Stevenson's prose took the appearance of a run-away train and left the reader little time to breathe, as well as the lack of a guide for the readers by giving them merely the faint whiff of background for the story and the characters.  It is worth a read but read it with no expectations; if you anticipate another Treasure Island, this isn't it.  Sorry, Robert!

An Irish Country Doctor by Patrick Taylor

A nice read about a young Irish doctor, Barry Laverty, who travels to the small village of Ballybucklebo to apprentice under an old curmudgeon of a doctor, Dr. Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly.  O'Reilly's brash manner and unorthodox medical treatments at first unsettle the young doctor, but as he realizes the care and the shrewd understanding that O'Reilly has for the villagers, he begins to see medicine not only as a science to treat the body, but as a philosophy to cure the soul.

While I enjoyed many of the situations in the novel, it didn't completely enrapture me.  The characters were lively and interesting but somehow they never touched my heart.  At times, the author appeared to manhandle them in a certain way to enhance a laugh or situation, which took away from their natural development.  This book reminded me of the TV series, Doctor Finlay (based on the books by A.J. Cronin) which follows the life and cases of a doctor in post-WWII Scotland, although it lacks some of the warm of the characters in this show.

All in all, this was a satisfactory light read and it was nice to escape from the city, and into the wild simplicity of Ballybucklebo.

The Beast by Faye Kellerman

There's not much I can say about this one.  The Kellermans are my brain candy that I indulge in about once per year.  The writing isn't stellar and the plots are formulaic but I've been reading them long enough to get interested in the characters and, since they are readable in less than 24 hours, they don't cramp my classical style!  The content, however, is not something that I would want to expose myself to on a regular basis.

I enjoy the addition of their foster son, Gabe, to the Decker/Lazarus household.  The Beast is a better-than-average book in the series.

Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury

"The seller of lightning rods arrived just ahead of the storm."

What better time to read this book than during the days leading up to Halloween.  I expected a terrifying, nail-biting, ride of horror but to my surprise, the story left me completely flat.

A carnival comes to a small town and two boys, Will & Jim, are anticipating its amusements; what they experience instead is an evil that almost defies their abilities to comprehend and their efforts to contain.  Finally, Will's father, stumbles on a way to defeat the devious ghouls and all is saved .......... for now ........

After reading up on Bradbury's making of the novel, it was initially conceived as a screenplay.  Perhaps this is part of the reason why the book felt so awkward to me.  A visual conception full of lyrical language, darkness and evil, in a setting with conventional characters in a commonplace town .......... hmmmm ........  Bradbury does not really explore any of the characters other than Jim, Will and his father.  Even the Illustrated Man, the leader of this nefarious group, is not developed past a description of him and a few instances where he is able to evoke fear.  And as for the language, the florid, and at times, awkward description was distracting from the plot.  Not that it couldn't be used to an advantage, perhaps like a symphony or as even a Greek chorus, but Bradbury wielded it in a stumbling manner, interspersing it through both the characters and narrative alike.  An example:

"It was indeed a time between, one second their thoughts all brambled airedale, the next all silken slumbering cat."

Well, okay, that's a nice image but the reader has to pause and think how to apply it to the narrative.  It appears he is setting up the following sentences in the paragraph, which are a list of contrasts, but how does it really fit into the story?

And this one:

"Since now learn otherwise.  Sometimes the man who looks happiest in town, with the biggest smile, is the one carrying the biggest load of sin.  There are smiles and smiles; learn to tell the dark variety from the light.  The seal-barker, the laugh-shouter, half the time he's covering up.  He's had his fun and he's guilty.  And men do love sin, Will, oh how they love it, never doubt, in all shapes, sizes, colors, and smells.  Times come when troughs, not tables, suit our appetites.  Hear a man too loudly praising others, and look to wonder if he didn't just get up from the sty.  On the other hand, that unhappy, pale, put-upon man walking by, who looks all guilt and sin, why, often that's your good man with a capital G, Will.  For being good is a fearful occupation; men strain at it and sometimes break in two.  I've know a few.  You work twice as hard to be a farmer as to be his hog.  I suppose it's thinking about trying to be good makes the crack run up the wall one night.  A man with high standards, too, the least hair falls on him sometimes wilts his spine.  He can't let himself alone, won't lift himself off the hook, if he falls just a breath from grace ............. Oh, it would be lovely if you could just be fine, act fine, not think of it all the time.  But it's hard, right?  with the last piece of lemon cake waiting in the icebox, middle of the night, not yours, but you lie awake in a hot sweat for it, eh?  do I need tell you?  Or, a hot spring day, noon, and there you are chained to your school desk and away off there goes the river, cool and fresh over the rock-fall.  Boys can hear clear water like that miles away.  So, minute by minute, hour by hour, a lifetime, it never ends, never stops, you got the choice this second, now this next, and the next after that, be good, be bad, that's what the clock ticks, that's what it says in the ticks......."

A great piece of philosophy but it kind of dribbles off and falls into nothing.  Did Will learn anything from it?  The reader will never know because it is not addressed again.  Did Will's behaviour change between before his father imparted this wisdom to him and after?  Not really.  Will was basically good throughout the book, Jim was a boy who liked to live on the edge and the father was a scholar cum philosopher who liked to contemplate the world around him.  No -- character -- development.

All in all, I didn't hate the book but I found it distracting, disjointed, and poorly developed.  If I hadn't read it, I wouldn't have missed it.

Rating:  C