Before re-reading The Great Gatsby, I’d forgotten how catty Nick Carraway is. He sounds to my ear like Truman Capote sniping the unfortunate fools in his way with his ironic, withering derision. Some favourites:

• Having told us he reserves judgment, he immediately judges “the intimate revelations of young men” as being “plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions”. (Keep your secrets to yourself, or at least be original about them.)

• On hearing that the cheating Tom Buchanan has become evangelical about a book: “the fact [Tom] ‘had some woman in New York’ was really less surprising than that he had been depressed by a book”. (Try to hear that without picturing him taking a self-satisfied sip of a cocktail on delivery of this devastating critique.)

• When Daisy asks Nick if she’s been missed back in her hometown, he says drily, “The whole town is desolate. All the cars have the left rear wheel painted black as a mourning wreath, and there’s a persistent wail all night along the north shore.” Ouch.