Nick Cannon and Michael Farris Smith: A Remarkable Collaboration of Music and Talent

J. Osborn: Since The Great Gatsby hit the public domain there have been various projects related to it. This is one of them.
It imagines what Nick’s (the narrator of Gatsby) life was like before moving to Long Island for that fateful summer.
Though it is mentioned in Gatsby, World War One, and the trauma it dealt to a generation, wasn’t a big topic in the book. Probably because it was too soon after the war. Societies like to ignore such war trauma for awhile before it gets addressed in popular culture.
The first half or so of this book is Nick dealing with being in the Great War and what happens to him over there. This part felt the most real to me. It felt like it was stuff that could happened to Nick.
The second part of the book was post war and on his way home Nick sojourns in Frenchtown Louisiana. He’s mostly an observer in this part as he gets involved in some criminal, noir, gangster stuff that was going on. His is trying to deal with what happened to him in the war and he doesn’t want to go home until he gets his head straight. So he was slumming it with other messed up outcasts.
This part of the book felt less Nick-like to me but that was okay. I didn’t read...

United States on Aug 04, 2023

Amazon CustomerAmazon Customer: You should read this book if you like the great Gatsby I finished this book in 2 days and have no regrets doing so glad to have my own copy to have on my shelf!!

United States on Jul 25, 2023

Ms. M. Glover: Although, not a badly written book, I really couldn't see much linking it to "The Great Gatsby". Had the author not mentioned the main character in "Nick" by name then I wouldn't have known it was the same character.

The majority of the story is pretty grim (the first world war, the very long time spent on describing his time in New Orleans) and it is only in the very last few passages that the story evolves into the beginning of "The Great Gatsby".

United Kingdom on Jun 14, 2022

John W. Matney: I've always wanted to know more about the narrator of the Great Gatsby and Mr Smith's accounting of Nick's life prior to meeting Jay Gatz was excellent. Are there more stories to come? What about his cousin Daisy? What happens to Tom Buchanan after the crash? Inquiring minds want to know. Please Mr Smith, do tell.

United States on Jul 24, 2021

Amazon Customer: I am completely unimpressed. This is supposed to be the backstory of Nick Carraway. Instead, this Nick is a completely unrecognizable, PTSD-driven, numb ghost who floats through the two or so years after WWI by becoming involved with list causes for no good reason and then disappearing. I did finish it......just so I could form an opinion. The last two chapters read like an exercise I might give in my American Lit. class. Tie this part of Nick's story to the beginning of Fitzgerald's story. It was obligatory and really didn't even follow much of the details from Fitzgerald other than he sells bonds, he briefly has a dog, and he notices the green light across the bay and a weird neighbor who stares at it and then disappears.

I am a musician. One of my greatest teachers told me that he hated musical compositions that changed keys without a measure or 3 of transition. He said it sounded like you just picked up your marbles and dropped them again in another place. This is how characters are introduced in this book. You start a new chapter in the middle of a running plot thread and read about a completely new character........and the next chapter the person is suddenly...

United States on Jun 23, 2021

Kaffmatt: Farris Smith is a talented author. His writing evokes atmosphere and emotion in equal measure. This book is no exception. In particular, the suffering of the men in and after WW1 are clearly portrayed and it’s horrible to read about the consequences of human trauma, caused by others, in war.
The writing is an unusual style and will not appeal to some readers but it is this style that adds to the drama of the text.
My thoughts are that the book should be read as a life journey of a man named Nick, the Great War and the consequences of suffering. (I read The Great Gatsby at school and cannot remember the storyline let alone the narrator who this is based on)
A thought provoking novel and recommended.

United Kingdom on Apr 01, 2021

V. O'Regan: ‘NICK’ by Michael Farris Smith is a prequel to ‘The Great Gatsby’ that explores Nick Carraway’s life before he moved to West Egg and entered Gatsby’s sparkling world.

It follows Nick as he serves in the Great War, first in the trenches and then in the tunnels as a Listener. Traumatised by his experiences, he delays his return home. He first travels to Paris, where he is swept up in a whirlwind romance, and then on to New Orleans.

In his Foreword Farris Smith shares his experiences of reading ‘Gatsby’ over the years and how his perception of the novel changed as he matured. He was particularly inspired by this remark by Nick in the original: ‘I was thirty. Before me stretched the portentous menacing road of a new decade.’.

So from the very few details provided about Nick’s background, Michael Farris Smith, himself an expatriate for a time, decided to write Nick’s backstory.

He completed ‘NICK’ in 2015, though due to copyright restrictions it was unable to be published until January 2021, when ‘The Great Gatsby’ entered the public domain in the United States. Given this, ‘NICK’ is bound to be the first in a number of...

United Kingdom on Mar 24, 2021

Graham: If you're going to take one of the greatest novels ever written - one that would feature on many readers' top ten list - and then take its narrator and write a prequel, you need to have a lot of self-belief and probably a thick skin. If you're then going to pull it off, you need ability by the bucket load. It's much to the credit of Michael Farris Smith that he's managed to produce a wonderful novel that ought to satisfy the vast majority of Gatsby fans and I hope this will bring him to the attention of the wider audience his talents deserve.

I've read Gatsby so many times I've lost count and will admit to a touch of trepidation when I first heard about this attempt to muscle in on Fitzgerald's territory, so to speak. The thing about Nick Carraway, the genius of Fitzgerald's creation, is that he is a shadowy narrator who describes everything that happens while giving very few concrete details about his own past. Fitzgerald leaves it to the reader to pick up tiny clues here and there to flesh out a character from very little in the way of biographical data and this means that the Nick I've come to know may be very different from the perception of others. There had to be a...

United Kingdom on Mar 06, 2021

Si: Interesting idea to take the Nick Carraway narrator of the Great Gatsby and give him a background from the Mid West of USA to the first world war horrors in France, a journey that takes him from the impact of his mother's depression growing up in a stifling small town to suffering the traumatic effects of the war, a journey that sees him lose and then search again for his wartime first love, experiences that shape his sympathetic relationship with Gatsby.

United Kingdom on Feb 14, 2021

E. S. Witthoeft: “The Great Gatsby” is one of my favorite novels, so I was eager for this prequel. After reading it, I don’t buy for a minute that this is Nick Carraway’s story. The trauma just doesn’t match the Nick we know from Gatsby. But it didn’t matter. It’s a great story and echoes very much the writing of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Worth the read.

United States on Jan 30, 2021