Have just finished reading Lake Effect by Rich Cohen. No idea what made me buy this book - probably it was reviewed favourably somewhere. I read it in a few days - indicating not only that it was easy to read, but also that I felt motivated to read it.
It is an American book - a memoir of someone growing up in a small commuter town near Chicago in the 1980s. Nothing dramatic happens, the book is just a chronicle of the ordinary and everyday. However the writing is very beautiful, and even the most banal aspects of small town life are given a literary gloss that makes them dazzling.
The book is elegiac in tone, with an intense nostalgia for a life that is past and a friendship that has run its course. There was something about the book that seemed to reference Scott Fitzgerald, and so I was not surprised to see towards the end the line "Gatsby is you and me". Perhaps that is a sub-theme of the memoir?
Above: article about The Great Gatsby by Jay McInerney that appeared in the Review section of the Observer in June this year. On the whole the review sections of both the Saturday Guardian and the Observer have declined over the last couple of years (not exactly dumbed down, but the book reviews are silly). Occasionally however you still come across articles such as this which are worth keeping and re-reading.
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