Cover Image: Nick

Nick

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Member Reviews

As a former English major, this book made my heart happy. While I didn't love everything about this book, it was so great to be transported back to this world again from a new point of view. Anyone that loves Gatsby, this is worth trying.

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DNF @ 39%. Just couldn’t finish it. The back and forth between what Nick was going through in the war and his flashbacks of his girlfriend in France and his parents in America was confusing and pulled me out of the story.

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This ended up a DNF for me even though I was very intrigued by the creation of a backstory for Nick from THE GREAT GATSBY. The writing flows between the past and present, but there was something about the style that didn’t work for me. Sometimes it seemed like the author was trying to channel Hemingway, and sometimes it felt like the inverse - a lot of words that weren’t amounting to saying a whole lot. On the whole I think this is just a case of the book not being for me - I can definitely see other readers enjoying it.

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When you see the author’s name, Michael Farris Smith, you may immediately think of violent natures, dark mystery, and spot-on descriptions of Deep South superstitions (Blackwood, The Fighter, Desperation Road). He’s broken from those roots, though, in “Nick,” a fictional exploration of Nick Carraway from “The Great Gatsby.”
Nick is the narrator of the novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The 1925 masterpiece is considered to be the pivotal voice of its time regarding societal themes of justice, betrayal, greed, and the American dream. Its copyright ended in 2020, which means that it can be adapted without permission from the Fitzgerald estate. “Nick” is the first published novel calling upon the “Gatsby” context and characters.
In much the same way that Fitzgerald recognized the dark side of the “good life,” Smith’s novel is a statement about the struggles to belong. It’s the tale of a common man facing the consequences of war, greed, and a loss of innocence. Nick struggles to find a place where he feels welcome and whole.
In this prequel, Nick’s backstory, Smith takes his skills as a wordsmith to a new level, creating characters that linger long after you’ve turned the last page. “Nick” is neither an easy nor a quick read. It’s a story that forces you to take your time, reading each line slowly to savor the written words for their flavor, after-taste, and temperature.
Like in all of Smith's novels, the protagonist is so much more than a one-dimensional character built from words. He crafts his characters from emotion and depth, leaving readers to wonder which is make-believe and which is a part of the author himself.
We meet Nick as he struggles to deal with World War I, seeking safety in the hastily built trenches and solitude in the underground listening tunnels. While others are dying, Nick loses himself in memories of home, lost love, and a realization that he’s alone no matter where he goes.
A whirlwind romance in Paris costs Nick more than a lover, and he finally tires of looking for what has become a ghost. He’s finally sent back to the United States, but he’s not ready to go back to his parents and a life filled with nothing in Minnesota.
Thus begins a spiritual and physical cross-country journey to save his soul, discover his worth, and search for a way to fill his empty heart, landing in New Orleans as Prohibition looms. Smith creates a world filled with brothels, liquor, and wounded veterans. While Nick’s life is hard, it’s easy to picture what he calls Frenchtown, thanks to the author’s careful, colorful descriptions and characters.
Smith has created Nick as a listener, a man in the corner who sees all and says little. He carries the burden of his own secrets as well as those who confide in him. When the weight becomes too much, he heads home to Minnesota to work in the family business. For a man who has walked the streets of Paris, smelled death in Germany, and fallen down drunk in New Orleans, the simple life is too simple.
He yearns for more, yet he doesn’t know what it is he craves. Finally, with his father’s permission, Nick heads to New York to learn the bond business. And as readers turn the last page, Nick is standing on the shoreline and gazing at the Long Island mansions and wealth of “The Great Gatsby.” The somewhat dull character created by Fitzgerald has a gritty past before he set foot in West Egg.
Through it all, Nick is a man of reflection and mystery. A man of hope and disappointment And, fortunately for readers, Nick is a man who comes to life through the writing skills of this Mississippi author.

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Admittedly, it's been a while since I read The Great Gatsby but I loved the idea of truly getting into the head of Nick Carraway. In The Great Gatsby, he's the observer, the casual outsider hanging on the outside but somehow gets dragged into the fray despite his best efforts.

In Nick, we see a similar dynamic play out as Carraway experiences the horrors of the trenches in France during World War 1 and finds reprieve in Paris. His post-war travels take him to New Orleans in search of a girl but where instead he once again finds himself in the fray, the middleman between an ugly decades long lovers quarrel.

I never found myself convinced of this Nick, but maybe that was the point, he always held himself apart from everyone he came into contact with and that's perhaps what the war did to him as he witnessed horrors he never quite recovered from. Despite it, I enjoyed the novel and really enjoyed how Farris Smith gives Nick a much needed back story. There was a raw honesty to the portrayal of WW1 and trench warfare and how little mental health help soldiers like Nick received when they so desperately needed it. With a satisfying conclusion that drops us right off at that green light at the end of the dock, I'm tempted to pick up Gatsby and continue the story...

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I loved the idea of a Gatsby (sort of), but drats, it progressively didn't pan out that way. There is so much going one, typically I'm okay with that, but this included a sort of depression while jumping around that I found myself confused a few times while trying to follow the path. We find that Nick suffers from PTSD and tremendous loss. Then we jump again. I wanted to love it, sadly didn't happen for me. Thank you #NetGalley#LittleBrown# Nick

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Smith's work will enrich my classroom discussions of The Great Gatsby so much! Nick Carraway's story has been untold for almost a hundred years: and Smith strives to fill in these gaps. His work illuminates a tale worth telling, old sport. I am excited to discover what my students think of this work! Thank you to netgalley and to Little, Brown and Company for the ARC!

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Smith is a decent writer and NICK is okay, but it reminded me of RHETT BUTLER'S PEOPLE in that I don't think this was the Gatsby prequel the world needed, and it didn't need the Gatsby connection for anything it was trying to do. I also didn't really buy it as an origin story for Fitzgerald's character. That combined with pacing problems the editor should have made sure were fixed, especially in the last half, made for a somewhat disappointing read.

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The Not-So-Great Nick

I love The Great Gatsby. Like, it’s one of my favorite books of all time. The love story is something timeless and beautiful. The story of the grit behind the glamour of the 1920’s is oddly prescient in our current times. So, when I saw the cover for Nick by Michael Farris Smith I kind of lost my mind. It’s not the eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg, those are Nick’s eyes! Nick Carraway! Sam Waterston! TOBEY MAGUIRE! It’s an origin story for Nick, what’s not to like?! My wife said, “Why would someone write that?”

I get her sentiment now.

I got this book as an eARC from NetGalley (Thanks!) and this is the sixth or seventh book I’ve reviewed. I had people think that I’m being a shill because I rated all of them very well. Here’s the time where I say, no, I’m not a shill because this book is not good.

This book follows Nick’s time as a soldier in WWI, his time in New Orleans, and how he ends up in West Egg. It seems like a slam dunk, but it misses so hard. The Nick Carraway of this book is NOT the Nick Carraway of The Great Gatsby. I know Gatsby. I know Nick. Nick Carraway this is not. This Nick is empty, devoid of feeling besides pining and lust. That’s not Nick.

“But, Zach, it’s to show how he got to being the Nick we know and love in Gatsby!” Yeah, sure, but it’s almost impossible to reconcile this lusty, angry guy with the Nick of Gatsby. If you can explain the throughline, I’d love to hear from you because I just don’t get it.

So what about the book itself? Honestly, it’s meandering and confusingly written. It jumps from using proper punctuation to none at all. I get the stylistic choices that are made, but good writing sticks with one sense of style in a book. It would be different if the first section was Nick narrating then it switches to Judah or someone else for part two. Then a stylistic change would be warranted. This just doesn’t make any sense.

As for meandering, the whole plot in New Orleans is one giant mess. There is no cohesion, no clear path. It’s just a bunch of random vignettes thrown together and it just doesn’t track with me. The whole section could have been cut out and I wouldn’t have noticed.

(As a sidebar, this isn’t the first time I’ve been disappointed by a Gatsby related book. The Double Bind by Chris Bohjalian was a similar disappointment.)

I hate to give bad reviews to prerelease books, but, man, this was a letdown. I’m giving this a 2/5, 3/10. You can pick this up on January 5th, 2021 and form your own opinion on the book. I’d love to hear what you think!

Thanks again to NetGalley for letting me read an advanced copy!

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This is a hard review because I need to separate what expectations I had with what the author delivered. Any time an author utilizes a character from another book readers want to impose their own preconceptions as to how that character should be portrayed. I never gave much thought to what Nick's life was before his character was created for The Great Gatsby. I gravitated to this title solely because I LOVE The Great Gatsby and the cover.
Smith writes a remarkable war story. The entire time I read about Nick's experience during the war I was reminded of books such as The Red Badge of Courage and All Quiet on the Western Front. The writing was haunting and vivid. The reader is there in the trench and the tunnels right along with Nick.
The Paris and New Orleans plot lines didn't do much for me. While they captured the essence of Nick's instability and confusion, they seemed removed from his actual story.

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As a huge fan of The Great Gatsby, I was super excited to have the chance to read Nick. Michael Farris Smith does a wonderful job of giving the character, Nick, a rich back story and fills in the gaps that the audience may or may not have even realized were even there. Nick Carraway before Jay Gatsby is a story worth telling.

I am absolutely incorporating this work into my literature classes! Thank you to NetGalley and Little, Brown, and Company for an advanced copy of this novel.

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I started off loving this, which was surprising to me. I don't typically like war stories, but Smith's writing won me over. (Ironically, as I was reading these early chapters, I was reminded more of the storytelling of F. Scott Fitzgerald's friend/enemy/contemporary, Ernest Hemingway.)

But then the rest of the book just kind of floundered. The parts in New Orleans failed to capture me, and they just went on and on.

Also, as a character history of The Great Gatsby's Nick Carraway, this didn't feel authentic to me. I get that I may have a different view of who Nick should be based on my own reading experiences of Gatsby, but I just couldn't see how this person turned into the one in Fitzgerald's book.

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Nick gives us the story of Nick Carraway in the years leading up to his appearance in West Egg, in his life before he meets Jay Gatsby. Starting in the trenches of WWI, Smith gives us some of the most graphic descriptions of the war. I felt myself there - the mud, the explosions, the dead. We are given glimpses of his childhood, of his mother with her dark spells. Nick survives but is traumatized. He refuses to return home, landing instead in New Orleans. Here, Nick meets Collette and Judah and we hear another perspective of how the war damaged souls. “Realizing he had been over there. That’s how they look, she thought. Their eyes are there but they are not there. Sunk back from their sockets and adrift in some opaque ocean of memory.”
Nick was the observer, the outsider, in The Great Gatsby. This book seeks to explain how he came to be that way.
The book is beautifully written. At times, it seems almost dream, or nightmare, like. But it lacks cohesion. We wander along with Nick. We move from scene to scene, witness events, but they never felt connected. And the latter chapters don’t help to understand who Nick is.
I was a fan of Blackwood and will definitely give Smith another chance.
My thanks to netgalley and Little, Brown for an advance copy of this book.

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Loved it! I’ve read all of Michael Farris Smith’s books, and liked them all, but this one was extra special. Historical fiction is my favorite genre, so when I found out MFS had ventured into the WWI era, I had to have it. Luckily, the NetGalley angels shined, and I got an early read.

For me, MFS’s strongest talents lie in his vivid and complex characterizations, and his incredibly descriptive, though spare, language. His books are packed with action, and this one is no different. There is always a strong sense of place, and he has a special gift for depicting people.

Nick’s travels took him from a secure middle class life in the USA, to France where he served during WWI. From his love affair in Paris, his life on the frontlines of battle, and eventually to New Orleans where he became involved with a madame, a war-torn veteran, and a host of seedy characters - this one’s not to be missed.

This ebook was provided to me by NetGalley in return for an honest review.

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It just does that........

The syllable becomes the word and the words become the telling. And within all this, Michael Farris Smith draws us back in time to the imprint of a character so embedded in our minds through The Great Gatsby that it becomes hard to envision Nick in any other setting but that of Long Island. Nick, hunkered down in the old servant's cabin, gazing up at the immense mansion encased in wealth beyond the mind's eye.

But Smith reminds us that we are all products of the human experience. We are simply more complicated, more intricate, more chiseled than that which we present to the world as ourselves. As Smith will show us through Nick, we have depths within us that lead eventually to an abyss of untapped emotions and reactions kept submerged beneath the surface. Fear resides heartily. We forbid ourselves from ever touching the rough edges.

Nick Carraway is thrust into the era of World War I where youth is snuffed out in seconds with the shock and impact of immediate death on the battlefield. Smith describes the brutality as artillery fire rains down on these young men crawling on their bellies to the front. One thing that stayed with me is Smith's description of "the trenches" that these soldiers dug out to secure short-lived safety. Nick and every soldier from every war appear to exist within their own personal trenches in war's aftermath. Safety and security just never seem to exist for them long after the smoke clears.

The wheel of the story now turns and we find Nick on leave in Paris. He catches the eye of a young French woman named Ella. Nick's French is so limited as well as Ella's English. But together, they fall into a rhythm of being. Nick promises to return. And the aftermath of this love affair will haunt Nick for the rest of his days.

Returning to the Midwest and to his family after the war is not quite an option for Nick now. He randomly chooses to head down to New Orleans to tread water for a while. He desperately needs to experience "life beyond the butchery"of war. But what Nick will find in New Orleans in Frenchtown will be a civil war between the loved and the unloved layered with treachery and vengeance. Never more have I seen "the walking wounded" trying to breathe life from within.

Michael Farris Smith embraced Nick's story with quite the undertaking. We walked down long winding streets and detailed descriptions of events. Words became heavy-handed at times. But no one slips beneath the surface like Smith does. He's a master of the dark intricacies of the wounded soul. And with that, Nick becomes a more multi-faceted character who has observed life from all sides as he looks up at that length and breadth of Gatsby's veneer of a mansion.

I received a copy of Nick through NetGalley for an honest review. My thanks to Little, Brown, and Company and to the talented Michael Farris Smith for the opportunity.

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I gave up about 70% of the way through. I really enjoyed the entire first section of his life at home, at war, and his journey back to the US, but as the New Orleans section went on and on, I just lost interest. I also felt no sense of connection of this Nick with Nick from the Great Gatsby but maybe that becomes more apparent in the final section of the book. Well written, but I lost interest in the New Orleans characters. I still would read Michael Farris Smith again, but maybe this book was not written for me!

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Well, shoot.  It feels as though I had a dinner date scheduled with Michael Farris Smith and someone entirely different showed up in his stead.  I have loved all his fiction up until now, but this simply did not have the appeal to me of his other novels. 

What makes for a special occasion?  Depending on the circumstances,  it may amount to no more than being alive.  War becomes a part of a person, his body and his mind, the scars left on both.

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I tried. I read about 70% of this book. Then it dawned on me, why does Nick need his own story? Why?

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It was so fun getting to see the backstory to the infamous Nick from "The Great Gatsby". I loved piecing together the storyline of his life before moving to the New Egg. This was a thoughtful, well-written and character driven novel.

Thank you Netgalley for the copy in exchange for an honest review!

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Gatsby's friend, Nick is the main character in this story. It tells the tales of Nick before he meets Gatsby. A good read that relates well to the reader.

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