Review | The Great Gatsby prequel novel Gatsby’s Rival tells story of the iconic character’s rise
- Richard Guimond’s book shows readers Gatsby’s life before he was the great pretender known as The Great Gatsby in an epic adventure tale
Gatsby’s Rival by Richard Guimond is an epic adventure story that rivets the reader from page one, with a high-stakes plot and an ensemble cast of characters as iconic as the great Gatsby himself.
Set in 1920s America as a prequel to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s seminal 1925 work The Great Gatsby, Guimond’s novel juxtaposes socialite Jay Gatsby’s strategic efforts to amass a fortune from Rhode Island’s illicit liquor trade – so he can win over his true love, Daisy Buchanan – with the scrappy determination of his salty rival Joe Bucolo, a fisherman turned rumrunner who considers that the “10-mile waterway from Max’s Wharf to the Atlantic Ocean”, and the liquor trade that fits so neatly within it, belongs to him.
Gatsby’s Rival opens in early autumn 1922 in West Egg, Long Island, as Jay Gatsby sits at his desk in “a cheerful pink suit … with a forlorn expression and emptiness in his heart”. Daisy has not called as he had hoped she would.
He recalls his dying grandfather’s prophetic words of six months earlier: “Your weakness for her will ruin you … she will never be yours … not in any real sense. She is no longer the girl of your youth.” Nonetheless, Daisy has remained Gatsby’s obsession.
Within the pages of Gatsby’s Rival, readers are transported to Gatsby’s life before West Egg, before he was the great pretender known as The Great Gatsby.
