I have read Gatsby no fewer than 30 times (teacher) and I absolutely adore this book for so many reasons, but to name a few:
– The prose is masterful.
– I am obsessed with the Modernist period.
– It's blending of a unique perspective on a fascinating historical point in time with a deeply compelling plot that doesn't linger for even a second.
– The blending of its eternally powerful themes and symbols without sacrificing any of the above.
I'm looking for books that can capture a few of these things, but most importantly #3 above. Does not have to be 1920's America, but it wouldnt hurt tbh.
Cheers.
by AlfredsLoveSong
3 Comments
You might like *Trust* by Hernan Diaz.
Try *Tender Is the Night,* also* *by F. Scott Fitzgerald and *The Sun Also Rises* by Ernest Hemingway.
Another Gatsby fan here!
I’m currently re-reading The Secret History by Donna Tartt. It definitely has some similarities with TGG, the protagonist actually commenting at one point that he felt the comparison. Does linger in parts though (I like the detail and introspection). And, while set in the early 1980s, the sense of time and place is deliberately blurred as the protagonist and his friends are steeped in a love of the past and what became the dark academia vibe.
Another book that I feel is similar to both is Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh. Again you have a narrator who is an observer to the story of the other characters, and an outsider to their world of privilege and prestige.
I love books set in 1920s England (British now living in US) – so try some E M Forster (Howard’s End, Maurice, A Room with A View), George Orwell (Keep the Aspidistra Flying), or Anthony Powell’s magnificent 12 volume A Dance to the Music of Time.