Book Review: The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo

Rating: ⭑ ⭑ ⭑ ☆ ☆

Content Warnings:

Recreational Use of Alcohol and Drugs, Depictions of Cheating and Martial Infidelity, Allusions to Domestic Abuse, Allusions to Period-Typical Racism, Threats of Violence, Obsessive/Possessive Behavior, Emotional Manipulation, Death, Murder and Vehicular Manslaughter, Sex, Abortion

Spoiler-Free Review

The world that Jordan Baker finds herself in wasn’t made for her. She’s an immigrant, Asian, queer, but there are spaces in the magical city of New York where she can find acceptance – or at the least, traverse freely as a well-kept curiosity among her peers. Jordan’s made her home in it, more or less. When Jordan’s dearly beloved but emotionally fraught friend, Daisy, introduces her to her cousin, Nick, the ‘exotic’ 1920s socialite facade that Jordan has maintained starts to unravel. Especially as it seems the great Jay Gatsby, who is rumored to have gained his riches through some demonic dealings, has taken an interest in Nick and what he could do for him too. Will Jordan just play along, fulfilling her part as an unwitting co-conspirator to Daisy and Gatsby’s affair, or will she carve out her own path?

The Chosen and the Beautiful, a 2021 Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Best Fantasy, is an equal-parts dark and whimsical retelling of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. This novel puts a spin on the cautionary tale of the American Dream, framing it through the lenses of one its supporting cast with same lush prose a reader would expect from Fitzgerald himself. Vo’s version of Jordan is a Vietnamese adoptee to a white affluent family; she’s educated and athletic but her gender, queer-ness and ethnicity relegates her to certain places within society. It’s a fresh perspective from Nick’s archetype as a sort of Everyman (or so he portrays himself in the original story; modern readers see Fitzgerald’s Nick as an Unreliable Narrator with none of the self-awareness that is integral to Vo’s Jordan). Also, did I mention this is an alternative universe retelling set in a world much like ours but with magic? Yeah, that took me by surprise.

The Chosen and the Beautiful crafts an intriguing world, but I felt it did little with it as the story very closely follows the major plot beats of its source material and the magic is used sparingly. Despite this, I think fans of the original will still greatly enjoy the twists that Vo’s retelling supplies. Through Jordan’s perspective, readers get snippets of Daisy’s home life – her true personality behind the perfect housewife mask and her childhood with Jordan. We get glimpses of Gatsby, not as a sympathetic and lonely man chasing what was always just a pipe-dream, but as a possessive and shady mogul that will do the worst to get what he wants (Personally, I always thought Gatsby was a bit of an incel).

But outside of the main plot, Jordan is a great fully realized character with her own story – unlike her original 1925 counterpart. In this retelling, Jordan has the ability to create – or at least replicate – life out of mere paper, a gift from her hazy heritage that scares and confuses her. Her place in society is unsure; and so Jordan covers up her insecurities by flittering from one girlfriend’s guest room to another, picking up after Daisy’s own martial messes, partying at magically-concealed speakeasies, and frivolously leading on ‘honest’ men like Nick. But as Jordan uncovers details of her past and new laws are written with the aim to rid the country of “undesirables”, her perspective on her own identity shifts and she is forced to make a difficult decision about where she belongs.

For the the girls whose headcanoned half the cast as gay since reading The Great Gatsby in their high school American Literature class.

Anyways, let me know if you’ve read The Chosen and the Beautiful. Did you read The Great Gatsby in high school as well; and if so, did you feel that Vo’s version expanded adequately on the themes of the original story?

– Virtually