The Chosen and the Beautiful

Okay, so this one is a Great Gatsby retelling and I thought I would venture out of my wheelhouse, which is occasionally rewarding. I didn't love Gatsby- Fitzgerald's writing style was pretty dry. But sometimes a retelling can get you way more invested in the original story. Circe is like this for me, or in a different medium, Hamilton. So I thought, let's give it a try! Anddddd I had a bad time.

Look, this book is technically good. It is very well written, and I will definitely check out more of Vo's work. If you love Great Gatsby, it's definitely possible you will really like it. The problem here is me. Either I or the world do not understand the word “retelling”. Because this is without a doubt fan-fiction. A retelling involves telling with some revision. A RE-telling. This is a telling.

There's nothing wrong with fan-fiction. Write yourself into whatever Harry Potter side story you want. But this book kept rubbing me the wrong way. It's exactly the story of Great Gatsby with just a few things changed. It changed Jordan Baker, Nick's girlfriend, into a queer Vietnamese-American woman. Guess who falls into that category? Nghi Vo. And Gatsby was in the public domain for SIX MONTHS before this book was published. She pounced on this at her first opportunity.

Maybe I'm being overly harsh here, I don't know. But I kept thinking that Vo read this book in high school and was like “wow I want to have sex with Nick AND Daisy” and so she went and wrote herself into the story, added a bit of random magic, some casual devouring (PSA: the word devour should not be used in oral sex scenes. Just...no! Go sit in the corner and think about what you've done!) and waited for the minute she could publish it.

This is very much a case of just not for me. Also, everybody in Gatsby sucks!! I had forgotten. They feel extra unlikeable here, but that just may be because I'm experiencing their unlikeability through new eyes.

5.5/10