Nick by Michael Farris Smith.
Published 25th February 2021 by No Exit Press.
From the cover of the book:
Before Nick Carraway moved to West Egg and into Gatsby's world, he was at the centre of a very different story - one taking place along the trenches and deep within the tunnels of World War I.Floundering in the wake of the destruction he witnessed first-hand, 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 flavour 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 only from the periphery. Charged with enough alcohol, heartbreak, and profound yearning to transfix even the heartiest of golden age scribes, Nick reveals the man behind the narrator who has captivated readers for decades.
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The Great Gatsby is a book I came to later in life. I don't know why I had not read it earlier, it was just one that I had not got around to, even though it is set in one of my favourite time periods - but when I did, I was smitten. I have read it many times since - each time picking up something new from the story.
When I heard that Michael Farris Smith was writing a prequel that would bring to life the enigmatic Gatsby narrator, Nick Carraway, I knew that there would be no shilly-shallying this time - this was a book that would be at the top of the pile as soon as I could get my hands on a copy - and here I am about to share my thoughts with you!
F. Scott Fitzgerald gives away very little about his narrator, Nick Carraway, as The Great Gatsby focusses primarily on Gatsby, his world, and his take on the American Dream, which gives Michael Farris Smith a lot of freedom to take his story into some interesting places - and he has used his time well. Sometimes you start reading a book and know straight away that you are going to love it. This is one of those books...
When we meet Nick, he is a soldier on the Western Front in World War I, although he is on a brief visit to Paris already haunted by what he has seen when he first crosses our path. On the grey, faded streets of La Ville Lumière he meets a young girl called Ella and embarks on a love affair that is doomed from the start, despite his romantic illusions. He will carry the scars of this liaison with him for ever, along with those from his time in the death-filled trenches and tunnels.
The time he spends with the ill-fated, battle-weary men in the sea of mud on the front line, combined with the heartbreak he feels, change the course of his life. His despair leads him to make decisions which put him within reach of Death's bending sickle - decisions which very nearly do for him. Farris Smith manages to convey the reality of the hell on earth at the front line in the Great War so completely in this part of the novel, that it cuts right to the bone. With shades of Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks, these are scenes that affect you deeply as you read them, and they leave nothing to the imagination, but of course, we know Nick's fate is not to die here in the mire of The Somme.
Once peace has been declared, Nick, broken and ghost-ridden, is unable to return home to the stifling atmosphere of his parents' house. A picture that Farris Smith paints all too well in the flash-backs that give us a glimpse of the oft bewildering childhood Nick has been trying to escape from - here we become familiar with the black moods that take over his mother, and the sterile predictability of a career following in his father's footsteps. Instead, after some aimless time in France chasing memories, he tries to separate himself from his own nightmares by embarking on a surreal odyssey across swathes of the USA via the railroad network - a hazy journey that brings him finally to the French Quarter of New Orleans.
Steeped in the heady, debauched atmosphere of the Big Easy, Nick becomes embroiled in an embittered feud between a husband and wife, that has a terrible toll on the people around them. He finds himself torn between a strange kinship for the husband Judah, a fellow veteran from the trenches, and a fascination with Colette, a wife who has chosen the life of a madam in an attempt to support herself financially - a woman who reminds him in some way of his lost love, Ella. This part of the novel is where Nick begins to find himself again somewhere in the no man's land between the warring couple, and where he builds on this foundation to rethink his ambitions to be a writer. Here is where Farris Smith writes compellingly of the wrong side of the tracks, the part of the city where lust, laughter, drugs and drink direct the fate of the people that live here, and it's glorious.
What next for our budding novelist? What takes him to the door of a certain Mr Gatsby? Well, it is the dawning realisation that he is avoiding the inevitable return home. It simply becomes time to grasp the nettle and move on to something else... something more. He makes a decision that takes him in a new direction, towards New York City, and the ending will leave you with a frisson of excitement for what you know comes next.
I am sure that this will be a book that divides the crowd among Gatsby devotees, but for me it hits just the right spot. It remains true to the spirit of what we already know from The Great Gatsby, building a beautifully drawn and many layered past that shapes Nick into the man he must become, before he fades into the background and ceases to become the star of the show - and my goodness, it's wonderful to read, with honeyed prose that simply glides across the page and into your heart. I adored it!
Nick is available to buy now from your favourite book retailer, or direct from No Exit Press HERE.
Thank you to Hollie McDevitt at Oldcastle Books for sending me a copy of Nick in return for an honest review and for inviting me to be part of this blog tour.
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