TITLE: The Chosen and the Beautiful
AUTHOR: Nghi Vo
272 pages, Tordotcom Publishing, ISBN 9781250784780
DESCRIPTION: (from the back cover): Immigrant. Socialite. Magician.
Jordan Baker grows up in the most rarefied circles of 1920s American society―she has money, education, a killer golf handicap, and invitations to some of the most exclusive parties of the Jazz Age. She’s also queer and Asian, a Vietnamese adoptee treated as an exotic attraction by her peers, while the most important doors remain closed to her.
But the world is full of wonders: infernal pacts and dazzling illusions, lost ghosts and elemental mysteries. In all paper is fire, and Jordan can burn the cut paper heart out of a man. She just has to learn how. In The Chosen and the Beautiful, Nghi Vo reinvents F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby as a coming-of-age story full of magic, mystery, and glittering excess.
MY RATING: 5 out of 5 stars
MY THOUGHTS: Nigh Vo’s reinvention of The Great Gatsby gives voice to characters Fitzgerald barely allowed to speak and classes of people he barely acknowledged existed (if at all), and in doing so opens up the narrative in wonderful, startling ways. And the author does it all while adhering pretty closely to Fitzgerald’s plot and pacing. Vo and fellow authors like Victor LaValle (The Ballad of Black Tom, which reinvents Lovecraft’s “The Horror at Red Hook”), are at the leading edge of writers who are confronting the racism in American classics (sometimes blatant, as with Lovecraft, sometimes by total exclusion from the narrative, like Fitzgerald) by filling in the time-gaps in the original novels or by showing key scenes from a new or different character’s perspective.
Vo does this first and foremost by having Jordan Baker, who is barely a presence in Fitzgerald’s novel, become our narrator in place of Nick Carroway. Giving us the story from any woman’s perspective would change how we see the events of Gatsby but giving it to us through the eyes of a character Fitzgerald didn’t bother to develop allows Vo to fill in scenes Fitzgerald doesn’t give us. And since Jordan is so ill-defined in the original novel, Vo can make the character anyone she wants Jordan to be – in this case, a child ripped from her homeland by an earnest missionary and raised in relative high society. We never quite learn whether Jordan was actually an orphan when she was brought to the States, but the heavy implication is that she was “rescued” perhaps against her family’s will. Vo uses Jordan to shed light not just on how the rich view anyone who is different but also on the unsavory aspects of the Chinese Exclusion Act and other anti-Asian-immigration legislation of the era. (And if that isn’t timely and pertinent in 2021, you’re not paying attention.)
Vo also expands the sexuality of the main characters. Jordan is clearly bisexual (or maybe what we would now call pansexual) as are, by implication at least, Gatsby and Nick and perhaps even Daisy. We never see Gatsby and Nick in the act, as it were, but Jordan sees through their denials pretty easily. There’s no judgement between the characters, although there is a fair amount of jealousy. And this is one spot where Jordan is more like her rich white peers than she’d like to admit: they all seem to “get away” with same-sex liaisons without fear of repercussion – even though in that time period being found out as a “degenerate” could result in jail time, psychiatric hospitalization, and loss of job/family/etc. (I put “get away” in quotes because while the societal repercussions may not be explored, the emotional ones are – these characters devastate each other over and over again, and it’s both fascinating and infuriating to watch.) The possibilities of being caught by the police never seem to occur to the characters, although there is a nod toward the magic that hides a gay nightclub in plain sight.
And that’s the other major difference between The Great Gatsby and The Chosen and the Beautiful: the magic. Vo builds the societal acceptance of magic into virtually every page of the book. “Demonaic” liquor enables Jordan and Daisy to float around the ceilings of Daisy and Tom’s mansion at the start of the book. We learn that Jordan is able to do paper magic, building things and even people out of paper. She’s the only one she knows who can do this, until she meets some Chinese performers via one of Gatsby’s parties and discovers how much more powerful this magic can be. There’s the heavy implication that the “money” behind Gatsby being able to afford his mansion and parties is literally infernal. The magic isn’t just set-dressing. Vo has clearly given a lot of thought to how it all works, and to how and where it informs/influences the events of the original novel.
And here’s where I have to admit: I have no recall of every having read The Great Gatsby in high school or college. Classmates assure me we did, but it was probably one of those books I skimmed the Cliff Notes for because I hated being told what to read when I was in high school. I also have never seen the various movie adaptations. So once I was done with The Chosen and the Beautiful, I decided I had to read Gatsby to see how closely Vo stuck to the source material. After doing so, I was even more impressed with the magic Vo introduces – little innocuous turns of phrase in Fitzgerald’s hands turn into beautifully detailed magic in Vo’s. Which really can be said of the whole book. I liked Gatsby well enough once I finally read it for what it is, but Vo expands it into so much more.
I received an e-ARC from NetGalley in advance of the book’s June 1 publication date, although this review is being posted well after that date.
