To those readers who follow my blog closely you’ll know that I am supposed to be reviewing “To Kill a Mocking Bird” by Harper Lee. All I can say is that I really did try but I only made made it a third of the way through. Please do forgive me, I am living through a plague after all. Every page was becoming a struggle and my mind just couldn’t take any more self conflagration. It was like I was slowly making my essence and vie for life fade away.

I was expecting it to be a fast paced court thriller about an alleged rape, featuring fantastical court argument. What I got was unending nonsense about a young girl’s childhood. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against young girls, I’m not a misogynistic pig but this was a particularly boring one. It is brilliantly written but so boring. It’s so boring that it seems quite fitting that school children are tortured into reading it. The film was so good but this novel is dross. To anyone that cares, it gets a zero. I’m sure some people will like, I just don’t know how.

So, I started reading “The Great Gatsby” instead and was I certainly happy that I did. It is set in the Roaring Twenties just outside of the Big Apple and was first published in 1925. It is told through the eyes of Nick Carraway who finds himself immersed in a great love story of sorts. He has moved to a new town and finds himself living beside a great mansion where raucous parties are a weekly event. After visiting a distant cousin Daisy Buchanan and her husband Tom Buchanan, he finds out from a fellow visitor Jordan, who he subsequently romances that it is owned by a Mr. Gatsby, a mysterious millionaire.

Subsequently he is invited to one of the parties, where he quickly realizes that nobody actually seems to know much about Gatsby. There are rumours about how he made his money but nothing certain. Little does he know that Gatsby has a secret reason for inviting him and that is to meet Daisy. They had been an item prior to The War and before he was rich.

What follows is a story of intrigue with the odd twist sprinkled in. It is now considered an American classic but didn’t do great when it was first published and the author died destitute. Let’s hope that is not the fate awaiting yours truly. During World War II, free copies were given to American soldiers and this was the beginning of a meteoric rise. I can see how the novel would make a lasting impression on young sold, stuck in a damp, squalid trench. Later, a few films were made telling the story.

My score is four stars out of five. I did feel that some of the characters were a bit too one dimensional at times. In particular Nick’s love interest Jordan. We learn little about her except that she is beautiful and plays golf.