Paperback Castles

"He stretched out his hand desperately as if to snatch only a wisp of air, to save a fragment of the spot that she had made lovely for him. But it was all going by too fast now for his blurred eyes and he knew that he had lost that part of it, the freshest and the best, forever."

"The Great Gatsby" is perhaps a rather simple story, balancing on the lines of beautiful simplicity and trivial banality. The plot is by no means revolutionary - but the writing is.
Fitzgerald weaves an intricate portrait of a delusional dreamer, a hopeless idealist and a mythical figure. Jay Gatsby is the epitome of mystification, and his constructed identity plunges him into an ocean of deception, false appearances and masquerade balls where no sincere emotion is ever revealed or expressed. He is blind to the present, living his life in the past. His story of greatness is in fact a tragedy.

Fitzgerald's prose is poetical and utterly beautiful. Every single page is a treasure box of gorgeous quotes, and if I could manage it, I would write them all down, memorize the words, and whisper them to myself every single night; desperately hoping they would shape and influence my dreams with their rosy mist.

"The Great Gatsby" is a complex study of what lies underneath the glittering surface; the final death of the American Dream.