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Sep. 18th, 2021 12:43 pmNghi Vo's The Chosen and the Beautiful is a slightly magical The Great Gatsby AU from the POV of Vietnamese adoptee Jordan Baker, and as I started to read it, I did very much spend the first several chapters thinking "maybe I should stop and reread The Great Gatsby first before coming back?"
...and part of me does regret a little that I did not do that, because I do think there are moments in the book that would have worked better for me, or had more layers to them, if I could remember the original well enough to determine exactly which choices and divergences Vo was making. On the other hand, the real question is, does the book work as a book itself or just as a fun exercise in intertextuality? And by like three-quarters of the way in I was invested enough in Vo's particular Jordan Baker and her own unique internal life and uneasy placement within the society through which she moves that I no longer felt a constant burning desire to go find the closest copy of The Great Gatsby for cross-reference, so I would say ... probably yes? Eventually, mostly?
Like, the parts of the book that are unique to this book -- especially the parts that lean into Jordan's paper-craft magic, flat figures and doppelgangers -- are really good; I read this book back in July or so and there are a couple scenes that are still haunting me. And I understand why this story interwoven around the Gatsby story, it's relevant and thematic; I do think possibly the balance was a little off? Like, this book sort of feels like ivy growing around the tree that's the Fitzgerald original ... the ivy is beautiful and changes the aspect dramatically but the tree is generally still the central structural thing and I think there's enough here that it didn't have to be, this could have been a ... new tree? The metaphor is possibly getting away from me a little.
Anyway, I did enjoy it very much and as always Vo's prose is gorgeous, her characters interestingly edged and her way with a central image simply superb. I admit -- coming back to Gatsby -- the thing that surprised me the most was the relatively central and sympathetic positioning of Nick and the Nick/Jordan romance, because tbh my vague memory from reading The Great Gatsby was that both Nick and Jordan were too afflicted with cynical observer syndrome to be particularly invested in each other at all as anything other than a brunch-date-of-convenience ... this was probably the biggest thing I wanted to cross-reference against the original just because I cannot at all tell if this is a true memory of The Great Gatsby (which I last read in the year 2002 or thereabouts) or simply many years of fandom osmosis.
That said, I did really love the way that particular thread concluded -- an incredible feat of full-book recontextualization that more or less justified the project of The Chosen and the Beautiful for me in and of itself.
...and part of me does regret a little that I did not do that, because I do think there are moments in the book that would have worked better for me, or had more layers to them, if I could remember the original well enough to determine exactly which choices and divergences Vo was making. On the other hand, the real question is, does the book work as a book itself or just as a fun exercise in intertextuality? And by like three-quarters of the way in I was invested enough in Vo's particular Jordan Baker and her own unique internal life and uneasy placement within the society through which she moves that I no longer felt a constant burning desire to go find the closest copy of The Great Gatsby for cross-reference, so I would say ... probably yes? Eventually, mostly?
Like, the parts of the book that are unique to this book -- especially the parts that lean into Jordan's paper-craft magic, flat figures and doppelgangers -- are really good; I read this book back in July or so and there are a couple scenes that are still haunting me. And I understand why this story interwoven around the Gatsby story, it's relevant and thematic; I do think possibly the balance was a little off? Like, this book sort of feels like ivy growing around the tree that's the Fitzgerald original ... the ivy is beautiful and changes the aspect dramatically but the tree is generally still the central structural thing and I think there's enough here that it didn't have to be, this could have been a ... new tree? The metaphor is possibly getting away from me a little.
Anyway, I did enjoy it very much and as always Vo's prose is gorgeous, her characters interestingly edged and her way with a central image simply superb. I admit -- coming back to Gatsby -- the thing that surprised me the most was the relatively central and sympathetic positioning of Nick and the Nick/Jordan romance, because tbh my vague memory from reading The Great Gatsby was that both Nick and Jordan were too afflicted with cynical observer syndrome to be particularly invested in each other at all as anything other than a brunch-date-of-convenience ... this was probably the biggest thing I wanted to cross-reference against the original just because I cannot at all tell if this is a true memory of The Great Gatsby (which I last read in the year 2002 or thereabouts) or simply many years of fandom osmosis.
That said, I did really love the way that particular thread concluded -- an incredible feat of full-book recontextualization that more or less justified the project of The Chosen and the Beautiful for me in and of itself.
