The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925
140-50 pp. (varies by publisher)
Summary
The story is narrated by Nick Carraway, who after serving in World War I moves from the midwest to New York's Long Island. There he picks up with a college friend Tom Buchanan and his wife Daisy, Caraway's second cousin—a feckless, self-indulgent couple of privilege.
He also befriends his mysterious neighbor Jay Gatsby, whose mansion is the scene of lavish nightly parties. Gatsby reveals to Caraway that, as a young man without wealth, he had met and fallen in love with Daisy during the war. Now moneyed, Gatsby is obsessed with winning her back.
What follows are the tragic consequences of his pursuit—and Carraway's return to his roots in the midwest to contemplate, with new found cynicism, the moral decay and carelessness of privileged.