Nghi Vo

"Gatsby the way it should have been written—dark, dazzling, fantastical."—R. F. Kuang "Luxurious, thrilling, and sexy."—Adrienne Celt 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. Nghi Vo’s debut novel The Chosen and the Beautiful reinvents this classic of the American canon as a coming-of-age story full of magic, mystery, and glittering excess, and introduces a major new literary voice.

The Chosen and the Beautiful

my girl is growing up and accepting herself🥹 love to see some character development <3

Mey-Thip Mortensen

It was, I could already tell, going to be a journey full of awkward pauses, terrible humiliations, and so many places where I couldn't be anyone but myself, but I thought I would survive it well enough.

I was more vulnerable with him, I realized. Alone I was a charming oddity. With him, I became a foreign conspiracy. Was that why I had never spent much time in Chinatown?

He would probably laugh at me for how badly I was doing, and I wanted him to close his capable hand over mine and teach me the way that I should have been taught.

Daisy being a little too real right now for my liking

“Well, what in the world are we going to do with ourselves this afternoon?” she cried. "What are we going to do with ourselves tomorrow, and then for the next thirty years?" 

"You're being morbid," I said, because I mistrusted that look in her eye. "We don't have to do anything. We can just wait for fall. Life starts over again in fall."

I hoped that those impressions would last in the marble, some kind of permanent snow angel that Daisy and I could leave behind to haunt the house long after we were both gone.

Even after all our time together, I hadn't quite resigned myself to being a couple yet, half of an equation when the male half could somehow continue as a whole without me. He was gone, I felt more myself,

I blinked, drawing back a little in surprise to see a face round like mine and dark like mine. I felt an immediate rush of recognition and warmth followed by an almost equal amount of repulsion and panic. When you're alone so much, realizing that you're not is terribly upsetting. 

“Of course. It was all only ever for her." 

If he had said it bitterly or angrily, I would have had some defense against it. Instead there was a longing and sorrow there that I had not learned to guard against, and I reached up, taking his face between my palms and turning him back to me.

oh isnt this one of the most beautiful sentences i have read in a sex scene 

knocking my head back against the cool wet elm bark and letting it dig patterns into my back and into my palms where I reached back to grasp it. I felt pastoral, like some kind of wild nymph come to enchant a human man from his world. 

beautiful beautiful beautiful just utterly beautiful 

You weren't meant to look at people the way that Lieutenant Gatsby looked at Daisy Fay. You couldn't peel your skin back and show them how your heart had gone up in flames, how nothing that had come before mattered and nothing that came afterward mattered as long as you had what you wanted.

Sometimes i forget gay also means happy😭

"Having a gay time now?" I asked, breaking the silence with a smile.

fira

whew oh my god no thoughts rn. decadent and cutting and sensual and dazzling.

Tatiana

The Chosen and the Beautiful: 3/5


  "In that one still moment, it was as if Daisy had, all unknowing, taken Jay Gatsby's heart for her own, and he would spend the rest of his life trying to get it back."

Premise:
The Chosen and the Beautiful is a retelling of The Great Gatsby with an adopted, queer Asian-American main character. Told from the perspective of pro golfer Jordan Baker, The Chosen and the Beautiful is a sexy, dreamy, and queer reimagining with magic and a sinister twist.

Writing & Plot:
Lots to unpack here. I think this is an excellent example of how you can love both retelling and the original material for two different reasons. First, the writing is ethereal. The way Nghi Vo writes is like nothing I have experienced before. The way she twists words into beautiful prose makes this book feel like a work of art. I also enjoyed exploring a queer Asian character in the 1920s and the book's overall sexy and adult nature.

The plot was highly similar to the original story of The Great Gatsby, just written better. If you're looking for something entirely new, this may not be the book for you. There are some elements of magic, but it's pretty sparse and not explored as thoroughly as it could have. The book only mentions golf once as well. I almost feel like this could have been fantastic if Vo left out these extra pieces, and it was solely a Gatsby retelling from Jordan's point of view as a queer Asian-American. The additional plot points ended up feeling unfinished and retracted from the beautiful atmosphere that Vo's writing depicts.

Characters:
I didn't connect very much with any character from this retelling, maybe save Jordan herself. I enjoyed the added layer of Jordan being Vietnamese and how it affected her in this 1920s setting. Furthermore, the queerness of every character made the story much more enjoyable. Overall, though, these characters definitely won't sit with me past this week. 

Conclusion:
Nghi Vo is a master of her craft by depicting a beautiful story told most eloquently. Her writing style is atmospheric and a wonder to read, but the additional plot points hampered the escapist nature. Jordan herself was highly interesting, but the other characters and plot generally stayed the same. Regardless of my rating, I will be reading more of Vo's work as I am such a fan of her style.

Now was anyone going to tell me that this was a "The Great Gatsby" canon-compliant retelling or was I supposed to find this out within the first 10minutes of the audiobook myself? Nghi Vo is a very talented author and I have enjoyed a lot of her other works but this really threw me off for about the first half of the book. At the end of the day, it feels like the retelling element and the novel's dedication to be as close to the canon as possible really got into the way of the concept reaching its full potential.

"I was a little crazy after secrets that year. I liked collecting them, and though I seldom told, I did gloat. I was years from who I had bin in Louisville, some of those scars healed over to give me a hard polish that made me more mean but less vulnerable" (24)

The prose here fits Jordan Baker's character like a glove, in this re-telling of The Great Gatsby. Here, Jordan is reimagined as a Vietnamese adoptee into a wealthy family after Eliza Baker died. As well as dealing with her feelings and the intrigues of Gatsby's parties, there's another twist--she's a magician, able to make things out of paper and frequently deals with demonic. These things makes the 1920s setting all the more intriguing...but will she be able to deal with it?

I've read "The Great Gatsby" many years ago in school, and what interested me the most were the shimmering parties Gatsby holds, all for a lost cause. It still plays out with this story, as Jordan "had an idea of what was on offer given the rest of the party, but whatever Jay Gatsby was having would be exception" (54). But there's a bite to Jordan's POV when describing the parties, as "all of Gatsby's beautiful people were being revealed for the sloppy, irritable, wayward, and human creatures they really were" (60). The setting remains in its beautiful yet toxic landscape, as we see Gatsby reunite with Daisy, and everything fall through. The twist in which Gatsby "sold his soul, and in exchange for the power to be a man worthy of Daisy Fay, he had created a way station for Hell..." (224) was a plot twist I didn't expect.

Speaking of which, the magical aspects of "The Chosen and the Beautiful" are intriguing, but some other parts weren't really clear. One of my favorite scenes was during Daisy's bridal dinner, in which Daisy is in a complete mess and needs help. Jordan uses her paper magic to create a doppelganger, which leads to a sweet moment between them. However, discussions about demoniac and other magical spells weren't as clear for the rest of the book--it was cool, but somehow didn't fit with the rest of the plot...

...except in terms of where Jordan came from. "...the only time the class was ever full was when he presented the section on paper wives of the Lac Dragon Kings...paper cutting was effigy magic, ancestor worship, and another sign of the barbarity of the region..." (115). It reflected in how the white characters of the book looked down on people of color (and Gatsby himself, seeing he was of mixed descent?) While Jordan was seen as the exception to the rule, it was still jarring. It played out quite a bit near the end--one with the Manchester Acts, and the other with a scene in Chinatown. Seeing Jordan come to terms with her Vietnamese background, and the ins and outs of it all, was rewarding.

"The Chosen and the Beautiful" is a great book, filled with great prose, intriguing twists, and a fascinating point of view through Jordan Baker. It sheds a light on the glitter and darkness of the 1920s Fitzgerald originally wrote, and it's so curious! But if only a few more things were developed, it would be the perfect book--not only as a retelling, but also on its own right.

Elda Mengisto

"I was a little crazy after secrets that year. I liked collecting them, and though I seldom told, I did gloat. I was years from who I had bin in Louisville, some of those scars healed over to give me a hard polish that made me more mean but less vulnerable" (24)

The prose here fits Jordan Baker's character like a glove, in this re-telling of The Great Gatsby. Here, Jordan is reimagined as a Vietnamese adoptee into a wealthy family after Eliza Baker died. As well as dealing with her feelings and the intrigues of Gatsby's parties, there's another twist--she's a magician, able to make things out of paper and frequently deals with demonic. These things makes the 1920s setting all the more intriguing...but will she be able to deal with it?

I've read "The Great Gatsby" many years ago in school, and what interested me the most were the shimmering parties Gatsby holds, all for a lost cause. It still plays out with this story, as Jordan "had an idea of what was on offer given the rest of the party, but whatever Jay Gatsby was having would be exception" (54). But there's a bite to Jordan's POV when describing the parties, as "all of Gatsby's beautiful people were being revealed for the sloppy, irritable, wayward, and human creatures they really were" (60). The setting remains in its beautiful yet toxic landscape, as we see Gatsby reunite with Daisy, and everything fall through. The twist in which Gatsby "sold his soul, and in exchange for the power to be a man worthy of Daisy Fay, he had created a way station for Hell..." (224) was a plot twist I didn't expect.

Speaking of which, the magical aspects of "The Chosen and the Beautiful" are intriguing, but some other parts weren't really clear. One of my favorite scenes was during Daisy's bridal dinner, in which Daisy is in a complete mess and needs help. Jordan uses her paper magic to create a doppelganger, which leads to a sweet moment between them. However, discussions about demoniac and other magical spells weren't as clear for the rest of the book--it was cool, but somehow didn't fit with the rest of the plot...

...except in terms of where Jordan came from. "...the only time the class was ever full was when he presented the section on paper wives of the Lac Dragon Kings...paper cutting was effigy magic, ancestor worship, and another sign of the barbarity of the region..." (115). It reflected in how the white characters of the book looked down on people of color (and Gatsby himself, seeing he was of mixed descent?) While Jordan was seen as the exception to the rule, it was still jarring. It played out quite a bit near the end--one with the Manchester Acts, and the other with a scene in Chinatown. Seeing Jordan come to terms with her Vietnamese background, and the ins and outs of it all, was rewarding.

"The Chosen and the Beautiful" is a great book, filled with great prose, intriguing twists, and a fascinating point of view through Jordan Baker. It sheds a light on the glitter and darkness of the 1920s Fitzgerald originally wrote, and it's so curious! But if only a few more things were developed, it would be the perfect book--not only as a retelling, but also on its own right.

Lara Engle

I wanted to like this book and I loved parts of it, but I don't know ... I would have liked it much better if it had been a book about the Jordan character unrelated to The Great Gatsby. It's weird how the author tied scenes directly into Gatsby word for word, but then changed things in a way that was just wrong. It didn't always seem purposeful. She used some of the symbolism from Gatsby and even did it well, but it didn't expand the meaning or reveal anything new. Basically, her Jordan is interesting, but she's stymied by being tied to the story from Gatsby.

I love The Great Gatsby. I've read it probably 15 times. I'm a high school English teacher and have taught it as well. My favorite thing about teaching this book is the way students' eyes find fresh takes on the characters and the society of the time. They're also great about comparing it to our world 100 years later. People are people, no matter what the time frame. It's both reassuring and disappointing to think of how society has and hasn't changed. I appreciate how Nghi Vo has diversified the characters. But I think by enmeshing her Jordan with the original story so closely, she limits her possibilities and her experience.

Basically, I think this book would be better if it was its own thing. The magical realism is beautiful and mysterious. Jordan's personal growth is revelatory. She has her own charm and complications. I'd just rather she had them in her own story.

A beautiful retelling of the Great Gatsby. I loved the added plot device of magic, and the remolding of the characters. There were moments where the time jumps would confuse me, but rather than that it was incredibly written. I especially loved the twist near the end. 

Floofyflower

tina

Thank you to Netgalley and Macmillan-Tor/Forge for sending an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review! 

This book was beautifully written. Nghi Vo's writing is captivating and magical, and it perfectly matches the atmosphere of the story and makes the bedazzling world come to life. However, as much as I wanted to love this book, it just wasn't for me.

renee badenoch

Absolutely stunning language, depth, and world building. This book left me devastated, haunted, and hungry.

A Most Anticipated in 2021 Pick for Oprah Magazine | USA Today | Buzzfeed | Greatist | BookPage | PopSugar | The Nerd Daily | Goodreads | Literary Hub | Ms. Magazine | Library Journal "Gatsby the way it should have been written—dark, dazzling, fantastical."—R. F. Kuang "Luxurious, thrilling, and sexy."—Adrienne Celt 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. Nghi Vo’s debut novel The Chosen and the Beautiful reinvents this classic of the American canon as a coming-of-age story full of magic, mystery, and glittering excess, and introduces a major new literary voice. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Cindy Lieberman

A retelling of The Great Gatsby with a focus on Josephine Baker, this time as a bisexual, biracial girl of various talents who was BFFs with Daisy.

Megan Lowe

DNFed at page 124.

I don’t know why I picked this book up. I despise the great Gatsby, and while this is a great retelling, with an awesome spin, I just don’t like it enough to finish.
Even the asianness of this book wasn’t enough for me to finish, nor did I really care what happened.

Stephanie Ridiculous

This is a hard book to assign star value to.

Pros: incredible integration of magic in a believable way. Quirky characters. Quick read. A harrowing undercurrent that pops up and surprises you from time to time, in a really good way.

Cons: lots of relational drama without a lot of work to build character investment. 

I feel like I should have read The Great Gatsby again prior to this. Its been so long I dont remember most of it, and I feel like there are some poignant things I missed because of that.

I think what I love most about Vo is how excellent she is on a technical level. I dont necessarily care about the Gatsby story in general, but the subtly of the magic, making it feel like true magical realism? Unparalleled.

Lots of content warnings for this one, including sex on page which oddly I could not discern ahead of time despite trying.

Aditi

This was beautifully written and the magical aspects of the book were fascinating. The atmosphere of the story was really well captured. 

The plot was kind of all over the place and I only ever knew what was happening because this follows the beats of The Great Gatsby but I still enjoyed the changes made to the original. 

Jordan, the main character was definitely the best part of the book. I really liked following this story through her eyes. The others were well written but aside from a couple scenes here and there I didn't much care for anyone besides Jordan.

Naty Corbett

There was a lot I enjoyed about this book but also so much that felt flat. Going into the book I wasn't expecting a retelling of parts of The Great Gatsby, I wonder if when I added this to my "To Read" list I knew that or if it was just on my love of the author's other work. 
The book follows Jordan Baker, a woman taken from Vietnam as a child and raised by an affluent white family in Louisville and a childhood friend of Daisy's. The book bounces between the present and the past with the two coming closer as the book progresses. There were so many ideas I wish were expanded on in the novel like the paper cutting magic, Jordan connecting more with the local Vietnamese population, her reconciling her privilege, and realising how fragile it can be in a racist world. The last point was briefly touched on towards the end but barely. 
I wish the book said something, I came out of it wondering if it had a message at all or if it was just a snapshot in time without meaning. 
Like anything written by Nghi Vo, the language used is beautiful. She is a wordsmith. But the flowery language can only make up for so much when the words are only as deep as the page.

Celeste Richardson

Actual rating: 3.5 stars, rounded up.

I was immediately intrigued when I heard that a fantasy retelling of The Great Gatsby told from Jordan Baker’s perspective was in the works. I’ve always been fascinated by The Great Gatsby, both by the characters and Fitzgerald’s writing style. It’s not the most accessible of novels, despite its brevity, but there’s something magnetic about it, much as there is that same special magnetism surrounding the title character himself. I was very interested in seeing how these characters translated in the hands of another, with magic added to the mix. The author did a pretty great job capturing the tone and feel of the original while still making the story their own.

The imagery is truly stunning, and captures the core essence of a Gatsby party as portrayed in the original novel to perfection. But the narrative itself is muddled and hard to follow. The inside of Jordan’s head is a vague and confusing place to be. This felt true to the original, but the muddy quality of the narrative made it difficult to become fully invested, and I found myself putting the book down after reading only a handful of pages and only reluctantly picking it back up. I just couldn’t connect. While this is something I often excuse in classic fiction like The Great Gatsby, I have a harder time looking past it in a new release, even when said new work is a retelling. 

I appreciated how the author incorporated discussion of race and sexuality without ever actually falling into a diatribe on the topics, and I felt like Jordan was a really great vessel through which to explore those topics. I also felt like the characterizations for Nick, Daisy, Tom, and Gatsby himself were absolutely spot on. But there was something about getting the entirety of the story from Jordan’s perspective that made the whole book feel like a fever dream, which is more than likely why it took me so long to plow through its less than 300 pages. 

The Chosen and the Beautiful is a unique, interesting take on what has been labeled by some as the Great American Novel. I do think it’s absolutely worth reading, especially if you’re a fan of the original. Just be content with taking your time as you journey through it, and don’t be surprised if the depth you feel sure is lurking beneath the surface manages to evade you. It’s much like a Gatsby party in that way.

I received an advance copy of this book from the publisher, Tordotcom, via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

You can find  this review and more at Novel Notions.

elif sinem

The prose is beautiful, but when this was said to be a retelling I didn't expect "fantasy racebent au canon compliant gatsby fic". Ughhhhhhh couldn't we have gotten, like, the whole paper magic story OUTSIDE of the Gatsby cast?

Alexandra Graver

The Great Gatsby from Jordan's perspective.

I loved getting to view this story from the female perspective and that we got to see what maybe the author imagined the other characters were getting up to away from the main story.

Overall, I just feel sort of meh about it. I don't have any particularly strong feelings/opinions. While Nghi Vo's writing is beautiful and the book is objectively good I found it hard to absolutely fall in love with this story because I've heard it before. At some points it just felt like a repackaged version of the Great Gatsby rather than a reimagining of it/being inspired by it.

Kwan Ann Tan

HOLY SHIT. this had a really slow start but it picks up and it is AMAZING! it's so hard to top a well-loved classic but the spin on this tale really turns it into something new and exciting while still keeping all the characterisation of the original characters and building upon what's already there!! my gosh i am in love

An Instant National Bestseller! An Indie Next Pick! This trade paperback edition contains new-to-print content! A Most Anticipated in 2021 Pick for Oprah Magazine | USA Today | Buzzfeed | Greatist | BookPage | PopSugar | Bustle | The Nerd Daily | Goodreads | Literary Hub | Ms. Magazine | Library Journal | Culturess | Book Riot | Parade Magazine | Kirkus | The Week | Book Bub | OverDrive | The Portalist | Publishers Weekly A Best of Summer Pick for TIME Magazine | CNN | Book Riot | The Daily Beast | Lambda Literary | The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel | Goodreads | Bustle | Veranda Magazine | The Week | Bookish | St. Louis Post-Dispatch | Den of Geek | LGBTQ Reads | Pittsburgh City Paper | Bookstr | Tatler HK "A vibrant and queer reinvention of F. Scott Fitzgerald's jazz age classic. . . . I was captivated from the first sentence."—NPR "A sumptuous, decadent read."—The New York Times “Vo has crafted a retelling that, in many ways, surpasses the original."—Kirkus Reviews, starred review 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. Nghi Vo’s debut novel, The Chosen and the Beautiful, reinvents this classic of the American canon as a coming-of-age story full of magic, mystery, and glittering excess, and introduces a major new literary voice.

Rosie

First and foremost the book is pretty queer. Jordan, Nick and Gatsby are all part of the LGBT+ community. 

I’m not a fan of first POV, but it works in the favor of this book. Jordan is a reliable  narrator Who takes us on the story of her summer. She talks about the struggles of being Asian, but because she’s a Baker she has the upper hand than most. There’s subtle hints of magic that unless you’re paying attention you’d think it’s just descriptive words. 

It’s a slow moving boo (with TINY print so don’t let the under 300 pages fool you) but it is the most beautifully written book I’ve read. It didn’t get a 5/5 this read because I felt almost a little too stupid to understand everything that happened but when I reread it, it will probably get a higher rating. 

This is significantly better than the actual great Gatsby and actually made me enjoy the story line and appreciate it. 

Dawy

I wanted to enjoy this a lot more than I did. The writing was BEAUTIFUL and I am definitely interested in reading Nghi Vo's other work, but the story itself was just not that exciting to me. It might just be that I'm not such a fan of The Great Gatsby, and I wish the retelling hadn't followed so closely to the original. The most interesting part of the story was the magic element, but even that felt like an afterthought that got subsumed by Daisy and Gatsby's drama. Incredible prose, but probably would not recommend unless you're really into the Fitzgerald original.

Madeleine Ngo

2.25

I don’t know why I thought I would like a retelling when I didn’t like the original.

Katharina Hoffmann

*Heaves a heavy sigh*
I should have stayed away from this book knowing that I don’t really care for The Great Gatsby. I only know the film and having never been forced to read the original in school, the story of Gatsby’s undying love for Daisy and his tragic ending left me relatively cold.

You now know that I can’t tell you how close The Chosen and the Beautiful sticks to the original but what I can tell you is that for a novel that was called a “queer retelling” there wasn’t much queerness in it. Jordan Baker, the main character of this story, was taken from Tonkin, Vietnam, when she was still a child and brought to the US where she only got to spend a few years with her new ‘mother’ before the latter died and her parents, Mrs and Mr Baker took upon themselves the task of raising Jordan. She is often exoticised by those around her because of her looks and while she loves to attend parties and soirees, she is always aware that she doesn’t quite fit in. What makes her stand out, even more, is that she is queer and as interested in women as she is in men.

I can’t tell you more of the story because… that’s it. Jordan complains about the heat, she visits Daisy, they drink cocktails, Jordan drifts from party to party, and they repeat the same thing pretty much every day throughout the summer. It was incredibly tedious to read. I had to force myself to pick it up again and time just seemed to pass very sloooooowly so that after I had read 20 pages it felt like I had read 100.

But let’s talk about the ‘queerness’: whenever a book is promoted with that term I expect more than just mentions of a character being interested in persons of the same sex. In this novel, Jordan spends most of her time sleeping with Nick, and there are only fleeting mentions of her staying at other women’s houses or dancing with women. When such moments come up, they are often mentioned in retrospect and never! described or talked about in detail. Honestly, one could even go so far and say that a stupider person might not have picked up Jordan’s queerness at all.

Oy but here is the best part: there’s magic! But it is never explained! There are goblins and demons but they are mentioned only in passing! The characters sometimes talk about an alcoholic liquid mixed with demon blood? Apparently, they can also float across ceilings when sniffing a certain gas? Jordan can cut animals and people out of paper and they live and breathe and talk like normal human beings? Oh, and there are soulless people who made deals with the devil but remember: all this is never explained but talked about as if those things were as clear as water being wet or grass being green.
I was so effin' confused throughout the entirety of the book, no joke, the confusion started on page 1 and never left. I don’t mind being thrown headfirst into a fictional universe that doesn’t explain every little thing from the get-go but what I truly despise is not being informed about WHAT. IS. GOING. ON. even after reaching the 50% mark.

While I agree that the book is beautifully written, I thought it was a superficial kind of beauty that only contributed to the book’s shallowness.

Sea 

3.5 stars. 
i love the great gatsby, it’s one of my all time favorite books so i was super intrigued to read a new spin on it. the writing of this books is absolutely excellent. the prose is so beautiful and i was beyond impressed with that side of it. on the other hand, i didn’t like how closely this book stuck to the original story. i was expecting a re-imagining so to read a re-telling that followed the original story almost to a t with just a few differences was kinda disappointing. i wanted to love it so bad. :(

Arden Kowalski

The Chosen and the Beautiful is an evocative portrait of the Jazz Age in America. It is an excellent retelling of The Great Gatsby (commonly considered a seminal Great American novel) and manages to develop many of the concepts touched on in that novel. I enjoyed the excellent writing in this book, the impeccable characters, and the pacing. This book may be slow for some, but I found the pacing appropriate to the beats of plot, which greatly enhanced the story.

One thing which prevents this book from getting a full five stars is the ending. I feel that there's a lot crammed into relatively few pages, which makes it feel rushed and unearned. In particular, the character dynamic between Daisy and Jordan (which is phenomenal for the vast majority of the novel) doesn't pay off in terms of resolution. I also wish that there had been more time exploring that revelation about Gatsby (yes, it's based in the original text of the novel, but throwing it in at the end doesn't give it the depth it deserves) and letting Nick's arc complete naturally.

However, I still enjoyed the majority of this novel. I loved Jordan Baker's distinct and captivating voice. She is not the character who stands out most to me from the original work, but I think what Nghi Vo has done here is elevate her character and make her dynamic and interesting. Daisy was so well done here, which means a lot to me because she has always been my favourite! Their relationship was probably my favourite part of the novel, and I can't help but wish for a companion series of vignettes about their time together. 

This book deals in vague magical realism, which I adored. It's amazing that this was incorporated with such seamless grace; to me a further explanation would've reduced the impact the magical scenes have in the book. I especially enjoyed the connection to Gatsby's lavish parties, which of course are such a recognizable and important part. Throughout this novel, the magic is present to an appropriate degree and serves to highlight the themes the novel addresses. In addition, I thought it was an excellent choice to make Jordan Baker a sapphic woman of colour—seeing her narrative in the 1920s was a case of great storytelling. Following this, I must say that the incorporation of the Manchester Act is a well-rounded choice from a historical perspective.

On the whole, I really enjoyed this book—even more than I enjoyed The Great Gatsby. It contains the critical element that makes a fantastic retelling: staying loyal to the original work while elevating the story. And, of course, a bonus of this book is that it wasn't at all plagiarized from Zelda Fitzgerald. I would highly recommend this wonderful work!

The Chosen and the Beautiful

Reviews

Highlights