A Quick Note On This Review: This article includes affiliate links to Bookshop.org as a way of supporting both local bookshops and my own ability to write.
Jordan Baker – an elegant young woman in the prime of her life and enjoying all the debauchery that New York has to offer in the 1920s – has a secret. Despite being an adopted by Elizabeth Baker from Vietnam and finding a place as a socialite who can rub elbows with the likes of Daisy Buchanan, nee Fae, her husband Tom, cousin Nick, and the mysterious Jay Gatsby who sold his soul for love, she doesn’t feel quite at home in the highest circles of American Society. While searching for the reason in the lavish parties thrown on West Egg and the beds of men and women alike, Jordan finds that the real reason why she doesn’t fit in is that even as her status as an Asian American grows ever more tenuous, she has a power that no one can rival.
The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo is the second book that I’ve read by Vo, and like Siren Queen, she does a phenomenal job of melding elements of high fantasy with the everyday realities of life to create something unique. The familiarity of the story of Jay Gatsby I had previously read didn’t stop me from enjoying the fresh take on the tale from the perspective of a Jordan Baker who seems to be marginalized more for the fact that she’s Vietnamese than for anything else. This focus on Jordan’s cultural identity creates an interesting position for Vo’s story as conversing with modern proponents of anti-LGBTQ+ and racist policies by normalizing the fact that even in “the good old days” as presented through the fictionalized landscape of Gatsby’s New York, members of the LGBTQ+ community faced less hatred than people that physically looked different.
Of course, The Chosen and the Beautiful isn’t a history, but a novel, and therefore there’s opportunities for Vo to open up different ways of presenting issues around LGBTQ+ and other marginalized communities that cast in stark relief the differences between an idealized past and what actually was there. For that reason, The Chosen and the Beautiful can be a great read for anyone looking for a book that can speak to the complex ways that stories can influence perceptions of the world and ourselves far more than we give them credit for. Like Siren Queen, Vo’s The Chosen and the Beautiful can also be a great read for those looking for something light, and yet there’s an undercurrent that would allow anyone interested in something more substantial to find it as well.
For writers, The Chosen and the Beautiful provides a great template for how to use old stories as the basis of a new one and turn it on its head. The use of Gatsby, Baker, the Buchanans, and Caraway allows someone to immediately immerse themselves in the novel without the need for long lead-ins, but more than a simple mechanism to reduce the time it takes to draw a reader into the story, the way Vo structures the conversation between The Great Gatsby and her own unique story allows the reader to understand how the old informs the new, both within the context of the story, and within the larger world.
If you’re interested in reading the book and want to support local bookstores as well as my work, consider using this affiliate link: The Chosen and the Beautiful.
What’s Next?
I am an avid reader and have quite a few thoughts on how some books could benefit both people that want to be entertained and those looking to sharpen their literary skills.
If you’re interested in finding out more about what I’ve been reading – and how it could benefit you – I will be publishing those thoughts on Fridays on a weekly basis. Check back next week for a discussion of Claire Lombardo’s The Most Fun We Ever Had!
The Writerly Review 