twentyventi's reviews
129 reviews

“The world was on fire, but we could only smell the smoke.”

It’s been a decade or so since I’ve read the Great Gatsby, but it’s memorable enough that I remember the key plot points, told through the eyes of Nick Carraway.

This retelling still retains the key pieces of the story, but we see the events unfold from the perspective of a secondary character in the original novel, Jordan Baker, only now she is an adopted, Vietnamese and queer. There are elements of fantasy and magic injected casually into the story - demon’s blood, ghosts, enchantments, paper creatures born to life, deals with the devil — which somehow fit naturally into this fantastical Roaring 20s world, with it’s sparkling loud veneer of glitter and fringe that people wanted to be enchanted and swept away by in the dark aftermath of WWI, all the while unknowingly creeping forward to another world war. It emanates: “Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die.”

Some of the themes of the original Great Gatsby are the American Dream, social class, old money vs new money — they are all still present here, but we also get to see what the American Dream might look like to someone who -looks- like an outsider, who will never fully belong no matter how rich or upper class they are.

Naturally, race becomes a theme of the story, and racism — the “casual” kind, blatant racism, internalized racism and colonialism. In the background of the main plot, the New York anti-immigration laws of the 1920s are on the horizon, something that would not have impacted the original characters as they were written in Fitzgerald’s Gatsby — but in Nghi Vo’s retelling, it always looms in the background, an imminent threat.

I am a big fan of Vo’s writing style. Here, it has a beautiful poetic casualness that fits the era so well. I would have loved to dive deeper into the fantastical elements, or to see it adapted to film.

There’s no denying the impact this book had on the science fiction and literary world, but it will not be for everyone. It is not entry-level science fiction — it is slow and building, dense and heavy, and it doesn’t ease you into or hold your hand to understand the detail-rich world that has been built. And because of the writing style it takes -effort- to read. I think for the very reason it is so rich with detail is what has made it such a revered story — that whoever can lose themselves in the story will find themselves in a fully developed other-world, and that is a very rewarding endeavour.

While I did find Frank Herbert’s style of writing challenging at times, and also very reflective of a man of his era (also with some character traits that are fat-phobic and homophobic), I’m glad I read it. I can respect what he created, and even more-so respect what Denis Villeneuve created from the source material into film.

I had attempted to read Middlemarch as a teenager and gave up shortly after Part One (of Eight). This is not a book for an impatient, inattentive audience — the pleasure of reading it is reserved for someone who is willing to wait for and work towards the rewards it ultimately offers (much like several of the characters within its intertwining stories, each striving towards their respectful goals).