Unlike most book lovers, I’m not such a great admirer of The Great Gatsby. For all its poetry, Gatsby has a cold heart and therefore failed to move me. Plus, the narrator is boring and Daisy is a twit.
Gorsky is brilliant update of Gatsby and it’s so much more compelling. Gatsby/Gorsky is now a Russian billionaire who earned his capital through dubious means, snapping up London real estate and using obscene amounts of money to remodel it. The said real estate is right across the road from the home of Daisy/Natalia, a Russian married to an Englishmen, and the long term obsession of Gorsky. Natalia is of course ridiculously beautiful and remote but at least she has an interest in art (and a daughter named Daisy-good one, Goldsworthy.)
Our narrator this time is an immigrant, Nikola/Nick, from Serbia. We never get an entirely clear picture of Nick; like the narrator in Gatsby, he is constantly buffeted by the stronger personalities and events around him and seems to be unable to assert his own needs/desires. But at least he makes some interesting observations from his perspective of an outsider, such as this;
”The British are squeamish about death, but they have no problem with sickness, as long as you are talking about the body rather than the soul. The body can bend to the will of the soul. You might be born male but become a women, you can a tattoo and pierce your skin, change the colour of your hair and the shape of your teeth and your nose, you can enlarge or reduce your breasts, adjust your outward appearance to whatever you want it to be. The only thing you are not allowed to be is unhappy, particularly if you are an immigrant. Unhappiness is a form of ingratitude, an abuse of hospitality.”
The immigrant perspective adds another layer of them/us into the novel, adding to the dichotomy between rich/poor and establishment/nouveau riche. Gorsky will forever be an unknowable outsider and that is part of his allure. The British are fascinated by him and his money but it is clear he will never become one of them; it is clear none of these immigrants will. The scene where the children of nouveau riche immigrant parents put on a very English nativity play at a posh private school is pure gold.
Goldsworthy is incredibly clever at including most of the major plot elements of Gatsby into this novel with a few twists that ultimately make it more moving. The mystery of who murdered Natalia’s husband’s mistress is quite compelling in its own right, and Gatsby’s murder is quite devastating. The appearance of his mother at the end makes it all the more so.
I liked Gorsky much better than the Gatsby but I think you need to have read the original to appreciate the elegance of Goldsworthy’s update. I would love to see what Baz Luhrmann makes of it.
