A critically acclaimed novelist pulls Nick Carraway out of the shadows and into the spotlight in this “masterful” look into his life before Gatsby (Richard Russo, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire Falls and Chances Are). Before Nick Carraway moved to West Egg and into Gatsby’s periphery, he was at the center of a very different story-one taking place along the trenches and deep within the … the trenches and deep within the tunnels of World War I.
Floundering in the wake of the destruction he witnessed firsthand, 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.
An epic portrait of a truly singular era and a sweeping, romantic story of self-discovery, this rich and imaginative novel breathes new life into a character that many know but few have pondered deeply. Charged with enough alcohol, heartbreak, and profound yearning to paralyze even the heartiest of golden age scribes, Nick reveals the man behind the narrator who has captivated readers for decades.
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Nick by Michael Farris Smith is a prequel based off of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s iconic novel, The Great Gatsby. The story is primarily told by Nick, the narrator of Gatsby starting with his time spent in WWI and leading to the start of the other famed book. Though I was interested in the background of Nick, I felt the story was a little thin in areas and the main plot a bit weak when compared to The Great Gatsby. Regardless, this book is worth the read for anybody who is a fan of The Great Gatsby or Fitzgerald’s works.
Don’t let anyone tell you all the great authors are gone. On my bookshelf Michael Farris Smith sits among Hemingway and Fitzgerald. His writing is deep and atmospheric. He paints a picture and delivers feeling and mood without spelling things out. A true writer, rather than explainer. I am going to jump in again because “Nick,” a prequel to “The Great Gatsby,” left me with a lot to chew on.
I got the book from NetGalley as an ARC!
The cover is absolutely beautiful and I would genuinely pick up this book at a store because of the cover!
However, it’s a really slow burn. Most of this was really bland and boring and I didn’t really see any Nick; which I guess was also the point of the great gatsby. I also feel like Smith makes things really traumatic for Nick in a way that they would have come up in the great gatsby. If Nick had been mourning something so much some mention would have come in TGG itself.
A compelling account of an American soldier named Nick who fights in Europe during World War 1, falls in love with a French woman, and suffers the profound effects of PTSD, as does a soldier he meets in New Orleans, where Nick spends time after the war instead of returning to a dull family business in Minnesota. Because of the subject of war–and to a certain degree, the writing style–the novel recalls Ernest Hemingway. Only on the final page is there a reference to….Jay Gatsby. The book’s cover is another clue that this is an imaginative prequel and our Nick is, in fact, Nick Carroway, who narrates The Great Gatsby.
“The story of Nick is the story of one lost soul on automatic pilot written in four compelling parts that dovetail to weave a psychic template of a WWI survivor. Its impact is profound, its resonance subterranean.”
It will take hours to wipe the awestruck look off your face after reading the last line of the anxiously anticipated Nick by Michael Farris Smith, a writer with a wildly enthusiastic fan base that fancies itself insiders to Farris Smith’s gritty esotericism. You’re cool if you follow this Oxford, Mississippi author. You are in-crowd if you’re hip to this writer who seemed to inherit the tool kit of the great Southern writers before him. Referred to as MFS by those who take his work personally because his stories do the talking for a certain strata of a particular region, in some ways Farris Smith’s clear, direct, and economic voice is an acquired taste even as his career prospers. But the publication of Nick will change all that, and wider readership will understand the attraction of this fearless writer who transcends literary limits and boundaries and plays by his own rules. Full review:https://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/book-review/nick
Great book idea, a prequel to “The Great Gatsby” from the perspective of Nick Carraway. Fresh and heartbreaking and vibrant. Very ambitious and great execution by author Michael Farris Smith!