The Chosen and the Beautiful
If you are excited about the release from copyright of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and the literary progeny expected to spring forth from that seed, you will most likely be thrilled with Vo’s version, replete with dark magic and sexual longings. In this telling of the story, Gatsby has dabbled in the infernal arts and quite possibly sold his soul; party-goers drink demon’s blood in their gin; and Gatsby yearns not for Daisy Buchanan but for her cousin, Nick Carraway—at least that’s his initial ruse. This is a world “dripping with money and magic.”
The story is told from Jordan Baker’s point of view. Jordan in the original was Daisy’s partner in lethargy and ennui. Vo’s Jordan is Asian, queer, and a golf pro with the ability to create living things out of paper. She’s the quintessential outsider, an adoptee who is treated as if she were “pet and doll and charmer” by society rather than a bona fide member. “I existed in a kind of borderland of acceptable and not.” As an outsider, she should have much in common with Gatsby, but she understands that he’s taken his magic too far and that without a soul he has little to offer Daisy.
While the fantastical world depicted here has fascinating facets, such as girls who literally sell their bodies so someone else can temporarily occupy them, these elements seem like so much dressing rather than an intrinsic part of the story. The writing is exquisite, but the plot drifts in places, as Vo attempts to make it her own, making me wonder if the association with Gatsby (as with the characters in the original) isn’t as much curse as blessing.
