3 Books

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

For some reason I was convinced I wasn’t going to like this book. But I ended up rather enjoying it. I’m sure everyone knows what it’s about but I’ll just write about it anyway.

Gatsby loves Daisy and has done for years but he didn’t get his chance to be with her before. He knew in order to get her he had to have money so he built his way up from nothing, moved closer to her and spent his time throwing extravagant parties in order to get her attention, in the hope that she would come by and their love would be rekindled. The illusion of Daisy that Gatsby has lived with is perhaps bigger than the reality of his love for Daisy herself; much like anything, your imagination is usually greater than the real thing. However, he is true to his plan and wants her to leave her husband to be with him. She knows she can’t although she most likely wants to (or did at one point). Then out of nowhere there’s an accidental death then a murder. Maybe not completely out of nowhere, I’m sure the murder was alluded to before but I was still surprised.

8/10

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Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett

I love the Discworld novels so much. They are so easy to read, they’re funny and the stories are always interesting. This one involved dragons, a man re-discovering his duty and love for his city, reawakened courage, and a little bit of awkward romance. What more could you want from a book?

8/10

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Self-Help by Lorrie Moore

This is a collection of 9 short stories, all of which are concerned with the relationships between parents and their children, and the relationships between couples. Each of them, although they contained a twist of humour, were all quite sad. You have divorces, mental illness, adultery, suicides all packed into a small amount of writing. They presented a rather bleak snapshot into lives you don’t usually get to see much of because people try to hide what’s really happening.

 I’m not sure if I can pick a favourite out of the 9, actually, since they were all so great. No, I think I loved ‘How’ the most. She is unhappy in her relationship to perhaps the clingiest man ever. He reads everything she reads, listens to everything she listens to, wants to do everything she is doing. It seemed like she felt smothered by his love for her and she wants to leave him but he is ill and puts it off.

“Pace around in the kitchen and say that you are unhappy.

But I love you, he will say in his soft, bewildered way, stirring the spaghetti sauce but not you, staring into the pan as if waiting for something, a magic fish, to rise from it and say: That is always enough, why is that not always enough?”

9/10