SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo: https://t.co/qlAspcLWTs
— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) July 15, 2021
Short Review: 9 out of 10
1/3
A Queer fantasy retelling of The Great Gatsby from the perspective of an adopted from Vietnam queer version of Jordan Baker is truly fascinating....especially where it diverges from the original story. Really good.
— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) July 16, 2021
2/3
The Chosen and the Beautiful has been one of the most anticipated books I think in the SciFi/Fantasy sphere for quite some time. It's the full length debut of author Nghi Vo, responsible for two of the best novellas from last year (The Empress of Salt and Fortune, When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain), and a queer fantasy retelling of one of an American literature classic - The Great Gatsby - featuring an Asian woman as its lead protagonist, rather than the straight white useless man of the original novel. So yeah, I had high hopes for this one, and devoured it in a single day, a feat made possible by Vo's really really strong prose.
Does The Chosen and the Beautiful live up to the expectations? Yes and No. It's very much a retelling that benefits from prior knowledge of the original story, as it does its best work contrasting what happens in the original with what happens here - as the story is now told from the perspective of Jordan Baker, now Queer and a Vietnamese "rescuee" (in other words, stolen child by a White woman), who observes what happens, the shallowness of it all, and finds out about her own past and the depth she's missing all at the same time. Where it focuses upon that aspect, the story shines, and is a triumph indeed. On the other hand, like a lot of retellings, the book feels shackled to the plot structure of the original, and doesn't really do a good job of establishing some of those plot beats - if you haven't read the original, I suspect you might be a bit lost as to why some things happen or why they matter, and those plot beats become a bit distracting as I found myself waiting for them to occur. Still this is well worth your time, and a fascinating exploration of a classic in ways that haven't been pushed by a major publisher very often before.
Note: I will have no compunctions in the below review about spoiling some of the events in the original The Great Gatsby, given its age. If that's a problem, well be warned.
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Jordan Baker is not your typical 1920s socialite on Long Island - sure she was brought up by a rich prestigious Louisville family, but as a girl adopted from Vietnam as a toddler by a woman who would die just a year later, she has always been looked at a bit like an outsider. Of course that look has allowed her to be ignored for her various tastes - from sports to men to women - even if it hides a magic she has only used a few times and doesn't quite understand. Now she mostly hangs around her childhood friend Daisy, enjoying parties and the underground debaucherous social scene in New York, where alcohol, demoniac, magic, and sex is all there for the taking....even in a country that is cracking down on it all, and is cracking down even more on people who don't look like the idealized white family.
But then comes Gatsby, and his neighbor Nick - Daisy's cousin. It takes Jordan a moment to recognize Gatsby as the poor soldier boy who once stole Daisy's heart, because he has changed so much - having sold his soul to the devil, making the use of his demonic gifts to throw some of the most lavish parties in West Egg. And everyone wants Gatsby, even Nick, a boy who Jordan can't help but feel a little something for. But what Gatsby wants is Daisy, and he'll stop at nothing to get her, and Jordan's the tool he means to use to get her.
Yet as Jordan finds herself getting involved with Nick - and Gatsby's quest for Daisy, she begins to see how shallow it all is, and she begins to see an alternate life out there, one from her own potential past heritage, in a world that is increasingly becoming hostile to someone like her - not for wanting it all, not for observing the truth behind it all, but for simply who she is - a hostility her friends and family are all blind to....
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If you've read or remember the story of The Great Gatsby, the basic storyline that this book will follow should be very familiar. Daisy is the shallow woman accustomed to wealth and a husband who cheats on her openly and doesn't really care about her as anything more than a status symbol, who will be wooed by the neophyte Gatsby, who has a dark underside behind all his wealth. It will end in disaster, when Daisy chooses wealth and stability over Gatsby, and ends in a sequence of deaths that are far from just. All of that happens, and Vo honestly takes some shortcuts about it, not really developing some of these plot choices or minor characters involved (Tom's mistress Myrtle is basically a prop who won't make any sense to anyone who hasn't read/seen the original for example).
But of course Vo couches this world in a more fantastical and far more queer direction than the original. So Daisy can make people fly with magic, and Gatsby's dark dealings come with literal connections to hell (he has literally sold his soul) and Jordan and perhaps other Vietnamese people can animate beings made up of paper. And the magic allows for speakeasies to be hidden behind magical protections, which is especially help because the debauchery they contain is anything but straight - such as one club where men wear dresses, women love women, men love men, and anything goes. And that queerness extends beyond the club, with Gatsby taking men (such as Nick) as lovers as much as women and Jordan liking women as much as, if not more than, men, even if her primary "love" interest in this book might be Nick.
But the key difference in this book from the original, and the key contrast is that of Jordan, her queerness a little, but largely her background as a Vietnamese woman essentially stolen away as a child from her homeland by a white woman and raised with no knowledge of her culture. As a child, she was regarded as exotic, but as she grew up in a rich white world, she was treated as an eyesore to be ignored at best...and Jordan's only opportunity as such was to act like she didn't care, to make use of that wanting to be ignored to go anywhere, to take advantage of some desires in the short term. But as she gets caught up in the ultimately entirely shallow love rectangle of Nick-Gatsby-Daisy and herself, she also finds for the first time a group of Vietnamese people who do know their heritage, and who do know what their magic is. Jordan's two experiences growing up with the magic of her heritage resulted in some epic disasters, as they met with Daisy and her family's shallowness, in particularly gruesome fashion the second time around. And as the world around her grows more hostile to the other, to what doesn't fit in the white nuclear family, Jordan realizes that the girl she loves, that the life she's been living, well it all is shallow and without a place for her. Yeah there's still the tragedy of the self made man being unable to win against the established racist asshole, but none of that matters.
Indeed this fact is why the parts of the book, especially at the end, which follow the script of the original story so frustrating - because while they have some significance still in guiding Jordan's journey they're so clearly shallow by that point (and Vo doesn't give them quite the development to make them work as they should) that you just can't help but think "these people are all awful, I do not care." It's a fascinating development that Vo puts in this book, a magical tragedy of a very different sort than the original, but one far more interesting honestly. Recommended.
But the key difference in this book from the original, and the key contrast is that of Jordan, her queerness a little, but largely her background as a Vietnamese woman essentially stolen away as a child from her homeland by a white woman and raised with no knowledge of her culture. As a child, she was regarded as exotic, but as she grew up in a rich white world, she was treated as an eyesore to be ignored at best...and Jordan's only opportunity as such was to act like she didn't care, to make use of that wanting to be ignored to go anywhere, to take advantage of some desires in the short term. But as she gets caught up in the ultimately entirely shallow love rectangle of Nick-Gatsby-Daisy and herself, she also finds for the first time a group of Vietnamese people who do know their heritage, and who do know what their magic is. Jordan's two experiences growing up with the magic of her heritage resulted in some epic disasters, as they met with Daisy and her family's shallowness, in particularly gruesome fashion the second time around. And as the world around her grows more hostile to the other, to what doesn't fit in the white nuclear family, Jordan realizes that the girl she loves, that the life she's been living, well it all is shallow and without a place for her. Yeah there's still the tragedy of the self made man being unable to win against the established racist asshole, but none of that matters.
Indeed this fact is why the parts of the book, especially at the end, which follow the script of the original story so frustrating - because while they have some significance still in guiding Jordan's journey they're so clearly shallow by that point (and Vo doesn't give them quite the development to make them work as they should) that you just can't help but think "these people are all awful, I do not care." It's a fascinating development that Vo puts in this book, a magical tragedy of a very different sort than the original, but one far more interesting honestly. Recommended.
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