An interesting read about the effect of World War 2 on Nick and the decisions he makes. In some ways this did not feel like a prequel. Nick’s experiences in World War 2 were a good read and could easily be part of a standalone story.

Thank you to NetGalley for my copy.

New Year New Blog Day Five – Nick by Michael Farris Smith Review
“Your world is a place unto its own… it is a place of its own truth and its own consequences and it is invisible to all.”
Nick by Michael Farris Smith is a masterpiece in its own right. I love The Great Gatsby; it’s my favourite classics and one of my favourite books. I am always wary of retellings of classics in case they do not portray the character right or get the true essence of the story. However, I have always wondered what Nick Carraway did before arriving in West Egg as it is not said much in the books which is what led me to this one. This book made me love Nick’s unreliable character even more and this story made me love the Great Gatsby more if that was at all possible. It moved me and kept me wanting more the entire way through this novel.
This follows Nick throughout his life starting within the war and his fight in the trenches whilst also showing the horror of war and PTSD. Whilst on a short leave he travels to Paris and meets Ella, an interesting French woman who shows Nick how to love. Whilst flashing back and forward between his time in the trenches and his time with Ella it shows how Nick copes being alone. It goes into his loneliness at home as a child, caring for his mother during her dark periods and his time with Ella. He spends time traveling the world in order to not return to his overbearing family ending up in New Orleans. Here he meets two ex-married people who are having trouble with their own lives after the war.
“And he raised his arms and reached out for the dawn as if to warm his hands on the rising sun”.
Smith brought me straight back to The Great Gatsby with his use of vivid descriptions of the war as well as the places Nick traveled too during his time. His unreliable narration and long, expressive sentences are similar to that of Fitzgerald himself. Through vivid, haunting nightmares of Ella and the bloody, torturous war it felt like I was living this life alongside Nick; feeling his pain and longing. It perfectly displayed how characters do have lives before we join them on their story and how it shapes them into the characters we see.
This book details the love, loss, friendship and heartbreak that outlines a person’s life. I could not put it down and I am looking forward to reading more by Michael Farris Smith in the future.
Thank you to Little Brown and Company and Net Galley for letting me read an advanced copy of this book!

Who was Nick Carraway before his involvement with the millionaire Great Gatsby? A great prequel from Michael Farris-Smith though I perhaps couldn’t see any familiar characteristics within his character, although little was know of his life before. A life of drudgery in the family hardware business beckons, ‘he was a watcher, he was a listener’. He began to fear the sight of his name below his father’s name on the door in the Midwestern neighbourhood. He escaped to Yale and from there volunteered to serve in WW1. Wartime experience affects him profusely, he’s suffers from profoundly upsetting trauma, hallucinations, interspersed with moments of hope when meeting a woman on the streets of Paris.

At the end of his wartime service he travels back to the US still suffering from the effects of his experiences. ‘Mumbling to himself and pressing his hands against the windows and trying to ignore the storm of voices rushing through his mind, a chorus of chaos that drowned out any thoughts of normalcy’ Today he would’ve been diagnosed with PTSD and instead of travelling back to his hometown flees to New Orleans in the hope of something better. His involvement with a fellow traumatised soldier and violent relationship with his wife in Frenchtown does nothing to improve his mental health situation. However this gives him the encouragement to move onto new environs and his life on Long Island begins.

Thanks to Netgalley the author and publishers for an ARC of this book in return for an honest review

I found this an intriguing concept which didn’t quite translate into a compelling novel. As a stand-alone novel I feel that this would have worked better, but setting it up as a Gatsby prequel just didn’t work for me.

The writing was very poetic at times, but I found it really hard to connect with the main character and feel any form of emotional involvement in his story. The narrative felt a little too detached, and almost factual with how the story was told.

Prequels of literary masterpieces can be difficult to carry off, this one fell shy of the mark...

I have not read The Great Gatsby, or seen the film, so Nick was a character I did not know at all. I thought this was very well-written. Nick's war experiences were quite harrowing but his adventures afterwards were equally dark and a bit too much for me. His eventual return home was a bit of an anti-climax. I immediately read the first part of The Great Gatsby, but the style of this book seemed very much lighter in comparison. I did not feel any urge to read further.

I was left feeling quite disappointed by Nick, which is a shame because it's clear that MFS is a decent writer.

There are some wonderful turns of phrases in the novel, at times almost reminiscent of Fitzgerald in their poignancy. But like Fitzgerald, it's wildly inconsistent.

The first half of the novel, taking place in Paris and on the front line of WW1 was captivating. It was graphic at times, and emotionally involving.

The second half in New Orleans, however, really bounced off of me. It seemingly went nowhere and Nick Carraway getting involved in the New Orleans crime scene was bizarre.

And this is symptomatic of the greater problem with the novel. Nick never felt like Nick Carraway of The Great Gatsby.

I'm interested in reading another of MFS's novels, but unfortunately this one left me somewhat cold.

A prequel to Gatsby that, like most prequels, is totally unnecessary. Some prequels are entertaining though and justify themselves thusly - Nick does not, unfortunately. Smith has written an unremarkable novel about an unremarkable character that nobody would read without some contrived connection like linking it to Fitzgerald's masterpiece. The writing is forgettable, there's little given to the character of Nick that enhances any reading of Gatsby, and the entire novel is a waste of time. I also don't agree with Smith's unimaginative and clumsy rendering of Nick - it doesn't fit with what we learn of him in Gatsby and wouldn't be how I'd think the character would have lived up to that point anyway. Utterly crap - a bad addition to Fitzgerald's legacy.

As a huge fan of The Great Gatsby, I wasn't quite sure what to make of this novel as it wasn't at all what I expected. Writing a backstory for Nick Carraway was always going to be a challenge as Fitzgerald gives us very little information about him, meaning that the reader can choose to relate to him in whichever way. I expected to see some of the Nick who, in The Great Gatsby, finds something tantalizing about glamour and wealth despite being simultaneously repelled by it, as well as a nod to his flakier, less reliable side. Instead Farris Smith focuses on another huge Great Gatsby theme: dislocation and loneliness. In particular, Farris Smith highlights how strongly and irrevocably the sense of belonging nowhere can affect soldiers returning from war, which he does very movingly and effectively. Through his fluid, rhetorical writing style he creates a series of tableaux describing Nick's love affair in Paris, his horrific experiences on the frontline and his angsty childhood back home. If I'm honest I found the first half overly descriptive, slow-going and lacking in actual plot. There was some plot later in the novel when Nick, unable to face returning to his hometown, spends some time in a ravaged Eastern American town and becomes embroiled in other people's adventures, thankfully picking up the pace and segueing more convincingly to the events and Nick Carraway of Fitzgerald's novel. All-in-all, I thought the novel was thoughtful and well written but not as compelling as I'd hoped.

Some things are just better left untouched, and I think The Great Gatsby might be one of those things. I wouldn't say that Nick qualifies as a retelling of that novel, but it does seem to be an avenue to explaining why Nick came to be the quiet observer of the infamous story.

Steeped in war, and set in the years leading up to Nick's arrival in West Egg where Gatsby's story begins, Nick tells the tale of intense battles, unfulfilled romance and the traumatic, life changing events which change a person from a living being to one who simply survived.

The narrative has the same pretty whimsy that Gatsby promises, with moments of genuine transportation back to the feeling that original novel gave me. But it is distinctly lacking something special that I think belongs to Fitzgerald that is maybe just blossoming in Smith.

I don't regret the read, but I wouldn't want to take the journey again.

ARC provided from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

It is possible that it has just been too long since I read The Great Gatsby but appears from the narrator sharing a name I don't see any connection.
The writing was good but I never engaged with the book.

‘The Great Gatsby’ is one of my all time great reads, so I found the prospect of reading Nick’s ‘back story’ irresistible, along with the iconic aspect of the cover. The weaving in of key ‘Gatsby’ moments such as the flashing light at the end of the pier and the ghostly silhouette of Gatsby are finely embedded by Farris Smith. And Nick’s childhood in his Mid-West family: comfortable, stable but dull also makes for an engaging read. World War 1 and its horrors, and impact on Nick are powerfully imagined, as is his poignant love affair with Ella.
But the sections in New Orleans, I found clumsy, repetitive and grotesque compared with everything else in the novel. A purely personal judgement, but I didn’t feel they added much to the development of Nick’s character or to his story.
Thank you to #NetGalley and #OldcastleBooks for my pre-release download.

In his forward the author states that he’s read The Great Gatsby three times and that the first time he read it, as a student, it provoked practically no reaction in him at all. But by the third reading he found that the book was speaking to him and furthermore he began to wonder about Nick Carraway, the man through whose eyes the story is told. Very little is disclosed about Carraway and in fact MFS had only gleaned three facts: he fought in the Great War, he was from the Midwest and he was turning thirty. Wouldn’t it be interesting if somebody were to write his story…

As this prequel to TGG begins Nick is sat in a café in Paris, he's about to return to the front and so to resume a life of tedium and terror. He’s with a woman, someone he’s met whilst on leave – of this we’re to learn much more later. He’s reluctant to depart the city and the girl but determined to do his duty. Once back the trenches we learn of how boredom alternates with fear and almost unbelievable violence. Nick is a loner who disappears into himself and thinks of the girl he left in Paris and how he plans to find her should he manage to escape the nightmare of this war. Later, at a point after the war, Nick finds himself in New Orleans and caught up in a feud that has had terrible consequences. Once again, it’s clear that though he’s amongst people he remains in many ways alone, and now haunted by events of the past.

Throughout, the story has a dystopian feel to it: grimness and a poverty seem to be ever present, as does violence and a sense of general lawlessness. The latter sections of the book could almost have been penned by James Lee Burke, such is its lyrical flow and astonishing descriptiveness. In fact, the whole thing is extremely well written, as I’ve learned to expect from this writer. It’s also engaging in the way it forced me invest in Nick’s plight - though I knew the end point it was by no means certain just how damaged Nick would be by the time we got there.

There’s no light and shade here, it’s all shade. This is a dark tale, make no mistake. Consequently I found this a tough read, but definitely a rewarding one. I feel that I now know Nick Carraway and, in fact, plan to re-read Gatsby – a book that passed me by on the first read, too – in order to re-acquaint myself with that story and perhaps re-appraise it. I want to see if I too can gain a new appreciation of what is thought to be one of the great American books of the 20th Century.

A look into the life of Nick Carraway before he meets Jay Gatsby. In The Great Gatsby, Nick is the narrator of the novel, but we don't glean much information about him so this novel is a great insight into his past.
Initially set in the trenches and tunnels of WW1 we see his character develop dealing with the frontline horrors of war and his down time in Paris.
Upon returning to the USA, unable to face the inevitable questions at home, Nick travels by train and makes his way to New Orleans. It is here that we see that he is not the only one dealing with the mental scars left by war and he becomes entangled in the lives of others in a downward spiral fuelled by greed, alcohol and drugs.

This is Nick's story before he knew Gatsby (as in the Great Gatsby). It starts in Paris during WW1 with Nick on leave from the front line trenches. He has met a girl there but his leave ends and he reluctantly returns to war. The writing is vividly evocative and when Nick volunteers for tunnelling the sense of claustrophobia is very real. The story follows Nick back to the USA after the war. His mental scarring is vivid at times and he decides not to return to his family but to go to New Orleans instead. Most of the remainder of the book focusses on his time there. Prohibition is coming and he meets some colourful characters. Alcohol and drugs figure along with a dark sense of despair at times.

Nick's time in the war and in Paris really grabbed me. The experiences on the front line in the trenches and tunnels were vivid. During the lulls he reflects on times past and the quality of the writing was clear. The underlying theme throughout this book is what we would now call Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. This story is both haunted and haunting particularly in New Orleans.

The writing here is wonderfully vivid. I've not read the Great Gatsby however I'm not sure that it is necessary to read that book before Nick. I have really enjoyed other books by this author. However, for me, this was unremitting bleak at times particularly in New Orleans. I found Nick very good as a character and perfectly believable. The other main characters were also very real to me and well crafted. Ultimately I cannot claim to have enjoyed this book I think. The writing is wonderful and parts I really enjoyed but parts of it are so bleak. I do plan to read more from this author and I am sure many fans will enjoy this. I would suggest new readers start elsewhere though.

A nicely written book about the horrors of war. Marketing is as a 'prequel' to Gatsby seems a bit of stretch though-this book could be written about literally any soldier, and has nothing to do with The Great Gatsby

I enjoyed this creative examination of the character Nick Carraway and what happened before Fitgerald's novel. The love story was especially compelling and I wish there had been more of that.

Michael Farris Smith heads into different territory with this breathlessly ambitious imaginative backstory of one of the most famous narrators in American literary history, as he pays homage to the little known observant outsider that is Nick Carraway in F Scott Fitgerald's classic The Great Gatsby. This prequel has the author flesh out Nick, now taking centre stage, vividly constructing how he came to be who he is, taking the reader right up to his arrival in West Egg, to become the friend and neighbour of Jay Gatsby. Nick grew up in Minnesota, unable to face small town life and the future that awaits him if he were to remain. He ends up in Europe and France, in the midst of all the harrowing horrors and trauma of WW1, trench warfare, surrounded by death and destruction, sharply contrasting with life in Paris that he experiences on leave, falling in love with a French woman, Ella, a doomed affair right from the start.

When the war comes to a close, the introverted Nick is no longer the man he used to be, he is haunted and broken, torn asunder by all that he has seen, physically, emotionally and mentally scarred. When he returns to the US, a lost soul, he makes the impulsive decision not to go back home, but head to impoverished, vice ridden, violent New Orleans with its alcohol, prohibition and amorality instead, plagued by nightmares, in search of hope and redemption until he steps into his role as we know it in The Great Gatsby. No novel by this author is ever going to be a feel good read, this treads bleak and dark territory, written with such vibrancy and rich descriptions that are Farris Smith's trademark style.

You feel as if you know and understand Nick with his flashbacks, are right there in the grim realities of war, love, and loss that Nick cannot ever erase, all of which explain his remoteness and distance from others, the outsider status that defines his role in F Scott Fitzgerald's novel. The author's beautifully realised flawed and damaged characterisation of Nick connects perfectly with that of the Nick from the classic novel, capturing how our personal histories make us the people we are in the present. Many thanks to Oldcastle Books for an ARC.

An interesting concept, I enjoyed the backstory and the depth with which the author takes on the retelling of The Great Gatsby.

Controversially, I didn't enjoy the Great Gatsby, but I loved this. Subtle, menacing and, often, tragic, it is a vivid portrait of a character western literature knows well.

Stellar reimagining of Fitzgerald's characters. The writing is excellent and the story is well thought out. I can see why this is getting so much attention ahead of its release!