![]() Every time I read it, I get something new from it. In 1930s New York, Billy Bathgate, a fifteen-year-old high-school dropout, has captured the attention of infamous gangster Dutch Schultz, who lures the boy. I have written essays about it, flirted with handsome men over it, leant it out, given it away. ![]() I have read this book at least ten times. It is about being young in the 1920s, with all its post-war glamour. It is about the rupture of war in every facet of life in every level of society. It’s about the American Dream and the violence inherent within it. It is about the madness and delusion of love. ![]() But this brief plot summary is not what the book is about. Nick watches his friend, Daisy, endure a loveless marriage to a bully and briefly revive an affair with the dazzling, deceitful, Jay Gatsby, before it all ends badly. It's set in 1922, on an island off New York City, narrated by the passive Nick Carraway. So richly lyrical that it always threatens to tip over into melodrama, but somehow never does, this brief but vibrant story always grounds itself in the fundamental need to be loved. How can I feel so uplifted, so enraptured, by a tragic story of deluded liars? The language: Fitzgerald’s writing is transcendent. Billy learns control over the powerful forces threatening his life in two unrelated activities: reading about gangland heroes and juggling on Bathgate Avenue. Is this the perfect novel? I suspect it is one of them. ![]()
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