Made in Chelski

It’s surprising there haven’t been more novels drawing on London’s fascination with Russian oligarchs. But how to write about them without it all seeming a bit Jackie Collins? Vesna Goldsworthy has hit on the perfect solution with her witty novel Gorsky. If you’re going to write about being nouveau riche, why not model your book on the classiest thing ever written on the subject, The Great Gatsby?

Gorsky doesn’t advertise on the cover that this is a thinly veiled rewriting but it’s obvious from the first page (and explained at length in the acknowledgments). F. Scott Fitzgerald’s writer/narrator Nick Carraway becomes Nikola Kimovic, who grew up in poverty in Serbia and has ended up in London running an antiquarian bookshop. His Kensington neighbour? Roman Borisovich Gorsky — ‘The Great Gorsky’ — who just happens to be building a palatial residence next door to Nikola’s humble cottage.
The object of both their interest? The seemingly unattainable Natalia Summerscale, a beautiful, married Russian woman: ‘She made Grace Kelly look like a market trader.’