THE CHOSEN AND THE BEAUTIFUL by Nghi Vo – Review

I received this book for free from the Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo
Published by Tor.com on June 1 2021
Genres: Adult, Fantasy
Pages: 272
Format: Finished hardcover
Source: Publisher
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The nitty-gritty: A strange and magical reimagining of The Great Gatsby, The Chosen and the Beautiful is full of spellbinding imagery and glorious prose.

He drew the invitation from his jacket, and I turned it over in my hands. It was good paper, deep red as if dipped in blood, with gold lettering sunk into the card stock. It felt heavy in my hand with all the weight of an imperial summons. It was real, and I doubted more than one or two had ever been printed.

Leave it to Tor.com to bring us this unusual, magical and gorgeously written story, based on the famous classic, The Great Gatsby. If you’re familiar with the source material, you’ll immediately recognize lots of familiar elements: the characters (Jay Gatsby, Nick Carroway, Daisy Buchanan and Jordan Baker), the setting (East Egg and West Egg), the time period (1922) and even the story beats. The main plot involves Gatsby’s obsession over his old paramour Daisy and how he draws Nick and Jordan into his scheme to win her over. But what makes this so different is the subtle magic that Vo adds to her story, which was one of my favorite elements. However, if you’re looking for a plot-driven tale, this might disappoint you. The story itself meanders back and forth from past to present, and it’s told entirely from Jordan’s perspective. This means that some important events are off page, which makes the story feel a bit distant at times. But as far as atmosphere goes, you can’t do much better than this, and despite a few issues I had with the overall plot, I’m so glad I had the chance to read this book.

The story is told by Jordan Baker, who in Vo’s version of The Great Gatsby is a Vietnamese immigrant, adopted by the well-off Baker family and brought to America at a young age. Jordan’s best friend is Daisy Buchanan, a young married woman whose husband is seeing several women on the side and not really hiding that fact from his wife. Daisy had a brief affair with a man named Jay Gatsby, but they lost touch several years ago. Now Gatsby has returned from the war and has moved into a huge mansion in East Egg, but he has never forgotten Daisy. Through Jordan and another acquaintance named Nick, Gatsby devises a plan to reunite with his one true love, even though he knows she’s married another man. Set in an alternate, magical Jazz Age, The Chosen and the Beautiful takes place in New York over the hot summer months of 1922 as the lives of these four characters collide.

As I said, the magic is subtle in The Chosen and the Beautiful, but I was completely mesmerized by the way Vo integrated it into her story. The main idea is that it’s very trendy at the moment—for those in the upper echelons of society—to sell their souls and make bargains with the devil. You can spot these “special” people because they are marked with one black painted fingernail (such a cool idea!). There is also a potent drug-like drink called demonaic which is also fashionable, that is often added to liquor or simply sipped by itself. Jordan, Daisy, Nick and Gatsby are all upper class, privileged citizens who have access to demonaic and use it often. Jordan has a special type of “paper magic” where she can cut objects out of paper and infuse them with life, and I absolutely loved this idea. In one scene, she makes a lion out of paper which transforms into a real lion, and there is an emotional scene near the end involving her magic which nearly had me in tears.

We also see the magic behind Gatsby’s deal with the devil in the form of his amazing mansion, where “It’s always five before midnight.” Gatsby is famous for holding outlandish parties (no invitations are sent—if you know about the party, you’re invited), and on these nights his mansion is alive with shifting corridors, ghosts and fireworks. And speaking of ghosts, it’s not unusual to have a ghost of two living in your house, and just like magic, ghosts simply “are,” there’s nothing unusual about them at all.

Vo’s prose and imagery are the shining stars of this novel, and I absolutely loved the reading experience. She does a great job of evoking the 1920s time period, a time of class separation, decadence, prohibition and secret speakeasys. Jordan and her friends are all upper class rich white people—except for Jordan who is Vietnamese by birth but has the same status because of her adoptive family—and they spend their days languishing at each others’ homes, drinking, partying, trying to decide what to wear and basically doing nothing important. My favorite parts of the story were the odd moments of magic between characters—Daisy and Jordan exploring Gatsby’s strange mansion for the first time; Jordan visiting a hidden speakeasy that is only accessible to the “right” people; and the opening scene of the book, where Daisy and Jordan magically float through Daisy’s house, and the reader sees things from their perspective. The story takes place over the summer of 1922, and Vo’s descriptions of the sweltering heat, the blinding sun, and the lethargy of the characters are almost hypnotic. 

I thought the choice to have Jordan tell the story was a good one, especially since she has a different perspective on the “chosen” lifestyle due to her ethnicity. Word of warning, there is some blatant racism from some of the characters, who make offhand comments about “the Chinese” in front of Jordan (who isn’t Chinese). I did like the fact that although Jordan has to bear these ignorant comments, she ultimately laughs them off because she’s part of the privileged crowd. Jordan escapes her boring life by staying at other people’s homes for weeks at a time (“Being a guest suited me.”), and it seems she can barely stand to be alone. I really liked Daisy as well and felt sorry for her because of her horrible husband Tom, but the male characters were overall disappointing for me. The “great” Gatsby himself seems larger than life at first, with an air of mystery surrounding him, but later his magic literally disappears and he becomes a rather sad man.

As for what didn’t quite work for me, I will say that if you aren’t a fan of The Great Gatsby, you might not enjoy the actual story. A lot that goes on involves the emotionally fraught interactions between Daisy and Gatsby, Daisy and Tom, Tom and Gatsby, Nick and Jordan, Nick and Gatsby, Nick, Jordan and Daisy. And you get the idea. There is a lot of relationship drama, and I got tired of it after a while, I have to admit. I also thought the climactic scenes (if you’re familiar with the story, you’ll know what I’m talking about) fell a little flat and didn’t have the impact I was expecting.

Still, I loved the atmospheric quality and Vo’s writing so much that these negatives didn’t bother me that much. I love discovering new writers, and I’ll be checking out Nghi Vo’s backlist as soon as I can.

Big thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy.