Critically acclaimed novelist Michael Farris Smith pulls Nick Carraway out of the shadows and into the spotlight in this exhilarating imagination of his life before The Great Gatsby
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.
I'm delighted to be hosting the blog tour for Nick today. Many thanks to Michael Farris Smith, No Exit Press and Anne Cater from Random Things Tours for inviting me and for my advance copy of the novel.
The Great Gatsby is one of my favourite ever novels but although there are subtle links to F. Scott Fitzgerald's book, it's not necessary to have read it or to have any knowledge of its plot to thoroughly enjoy Nick. It is a prequel but Michael Farris Smith doesn't attempt to mimic the source material and has instead written an emotive character study which stands on its own merits.
The novel is divided into three parts and is inspired by the information Nick Carraway reveals about his past in The Great Gatsby. The first part of the book explores his experiences during the First World War with flashbacks to his years growing up in the Midwest. The opening line of Gatsby is echoed here as Nick recalls the advice his father gave him when he started work in the family hardware store, counselling him to remember that not everybody has the same advantages that he has.
It's perhaps here that Nick first becomes an observer of other people but it's his war years which unsurprisingly shape the man he becomes. Nick's experiences on the Western Front are intense and viscerally moving while the brief, passionate affair he has while on leave in Paris also influences his immediate decisions and his subsequent post-war life. The vivid descriptions of the Front are poignantly convincing and the back streets of Paris are evocatively brought to life. This isn't the romantic City of Lights but a place where young girls are lured by glittering promises of work only to find the reality is a much darker prospect. Nick and Ella are two broken souls, drawn together but there's a tragic inevitability to their romance. Both are too weighed down by the things they have seen and done and although Nick tries to recapture what he believes they had, he is left to try to adjust to a world where everything and nothing is the same.
The second part of the book finds Nick unwilling to return back to his family home, finding himself instead in the tumultuous, torrid underbelly of New Orleans. There are a number of scenes which reveal the lasting legacy of the war on his mental health and it's perhaps not a shock that he rejects the mundane certainty of home, despite it becoming clear that he doesn't know what he really expects to find. He is drawn into the tragic, violent lives of Judah and Colette and while their seedy, brutal existence may appear to be a world away from decadence of Gatsby, Nick is on the periphery of danger and debauchery, a position he seems destined to repeat. With Prohibition nearing, New Orleans is a tinderbox city, unpredictable and brutal, and the lurid sense of place here is superb.
The final third of the novel further explores the dark tensions and anguished flaws of these often abhorrent characters. However, despite their terrible actions, there is profound, messy humanity here as Michael Farris Smith explores the awful, inevitable combination of poverty, lust and revenge set against the lasting legacy of the war. The closing chapters bring readers to the point where Nick ends up moving East and by this point, his role as the principled witness and narrator makes perfect sense. The final line of Nick is a clever lead into The Great Gatsby and this imaginative, compelling story is both a fitting prequel and a poignant, gripping novel in its own right. I enjoyed it immensely and highly recommend it.
Nick is published in the UK by No Exit Press, purchasing links can be found here.
Don't miss the rest of the blog tour, details are below.
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