Nick

NICK
Michael Farris Smith
No Exit Press

REVIEWED BY WILLIE CAMPBELL

The Great Gadsby is a timeless classic of American fiction. It depicts the realisation of the great American Dream in the jazz age of the 1920s. Its narrator, Nick Carraway, tells of his encounters with Gadsby, revealing very little of himself in the process.

Michael Farris Smith sets out to bring us the Nick before he met Gadsby and give us his experiences that contribute to the formation of his character.

We meet Nick in the European trenches of World War 1. This is brought to us in compelling imagery and finds him dreaming of his previous reality as a child and, later, in a relationship.

He leaves his war service and takes the long way home to America, through a short-lived romance in Paris and experiences New Orleans with its post-war energy and violent underbelly.

Through the journey, the challenge of accepting current reality after the combat experience is ever present.

Farris Smith has been able to publish this prequel, as copyright for Gadsby expired in 2021.

He maintains his standing as a compelling writer of Southern Noir. His descriptions of the surroundings through which Nick travels are near poetic and allow his reactions to sit in a context.

Whether this helps understand the Nick in Gadsby is possibly best decided by a re-reading of that earlier masterpiece.

Willie Campbell is a Dunedin educator