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Title: The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo
Details: Copyright 2021, MacMillian Publishing Group LLC
Synopsis (By Way of Front Flap): "IMMIGRANT. SOCIALITE. MAGICIAN.
JORDAN BAKER GROWS UP in the most rarefied circles of 1920s American society—she has money, education, a killer golf handicap, and invitations to some of the most exclusive parties of the Jazz Age. She’s also queer and Asian, a Vietnamese adoptee treated as an exotic attraction by her peers, while the most important doors remain closed to her.
But the world is full of wonders: infernal pacts and dazzling illusions, lost ghosts and elemental mysteries. In all paper is fire, and Jordan can burn the cut paper heart out of a man. She just has to learn how.
Nghi Vo’s debut novel, The Chosen and the Beautiful, reinvents this classic of the American canon as a coming-of-age story full of magic, mystery, and glittering excess, and introduces a major new literary voice."
Why I Wanted to Read It: My love and passion for the Jazz Age knows no bounds and this looked amazing some time ago and I'd only now finally gotten around to it.
How I Liked It: I've said it before. We're living in the age of the sequel, the prequel, and the reboot. Uncertain times (yes, all times are uncertain but seriously now) call for certainty, and the nostalgia industrial complex is as smoking and hideous a behemoth as it's ever been, lurching ever-taller over popular culture a fattened, crazed monster compared to the quirky but constant friend it once was nearly a century ago.
But what happens when these reimaginings of preexisting franchises are not a stale retread, not a not-bad redo, but something actually sorely needed? What makes a new version of a well-tread story not only excellent but maybe even necessary? Just you wait.
But first! It's the summer of 1922, and for Jordan Baker, things are heating up. A Vietnamese immigrant taken (or "saved") as a baby by a rich white woman missionary from a prominent southern family (where she was raised by her wealthy, bigoted "adopted" grandparents), Jordan has grown up in both luxury and isolation. Befriending young and equally wealthy and prominent (but white) Daisy Fay with paper magic (she crafts a paper lion that comes to life before horrified adults stamp it out) when the two are little girls, they grow up together as friends, Daisy kooky and moody and frequently blind to her own privilege and to how much she tends to use Jordan (borrowing her magic with paper yet again to get out of her own engagement party, having Jordan help her secure an herbal abortion when the girls are teenagers), something told alongside the summer of 1922 story in flashbacks.
In the summer of 1922, Daisy is unhappily married to blowhard bigot icicle Tom Buchanan, himself carrying on an affair more or less openly, and resentful of the man from his wife's past who is now wealthy and still in love (or at least in infatuation) with the girl that got away, none other than drugstore mogul Jay Gatsby.
Daisy's cousin, Nick Carraway, has just turned up in town (and caught Gatsy's eye as well as Jordan's) and Jordan and Nick embark on a romance.
But there's a lot going on. For one, there's a lot of infatuation and romance to be had and while Daisy tries to make up her mind between Gatsby and Tom, Jordan dallies and tries not to notice the walls closing in with the (fictional, but clearly based on the real life 1924 Immigration Act) Manchester Act, from which not even her wealth and position will protect her from the fact she is not white. She meets an east Asian man, a worker on Gatsby's house, and he introduces her to his community, an experience she finds both strangely familiar and just outright strange, having never been surrounded by people who look like her before.
Things come to a tragic head with Daisy and Gatsby, and Jordan comes to some shocking realizations. She and Nick part ways and she prepares to go overseas for awhile, encouraged by her wealthy adopted Aunt Justine with whom she's been living. It's suggested she's forever changed, at least partially, by the summer of 1922 and what happened.
If the names and characters sound familiar, congratulations! You've recognized one of the most influential novels of the 20th century, The Great Gatsby, but obviously it's been given quite a few twists. (Incidentally, if the name "Jordan Baker" sounds more 2020s than 1920s, reread or at least revisit the 1925 novel and have your mind blown.)
Some history post summary and pre actual review! As I've mentioned here before, I have been fascinated since my teens with the Jazz Age. The fashion, the music, the poetry, the film, the art, the Queerness, much more, it all has a hold on me. That said, I didn't enjoy The Great Gatsby the novel when I first read it. Unfortunately, I had a teacher who sucked all the joy out of it (teachers can make or break such a book! Put more funding into education!) and subsequent rereadings were tainted for me by the book's history, namely the book's author F. Scott Fitzgerald, who shamelessly ripped off (sometimes literally verbatim) his wife, writer Zelda Fitzgerald, now remembered more for her mental illness than for her talent (draw your own conclusions there) although thankfully history is reconsidering her legacy.
Add to that the fact the story essentially comes from the author's own experience with a woman whose family (or she herself; the story varies) rejected him because of his social standing and finances at the time and F. Scott Fitzgerald was in many ways the most unflattering version of his most famous character, Jay Gatsby, even down to the name alteration.
Add on top of that the fact Fitzgerald's own Daisy Buchanan, Ginevra King, was also a writer who wrote a version of the Gatsby story years before which Fitzgerald had in his possession literally all of his life and as you may imagine, there are some distinct similarities to Fitgerald's Gatsby, and yet King is still primarily known as an "heiress/socialite" or at best the inspiration for Fitzgerald's Daisy Buchanan.
And while Gatsby is now a buzzword for all things 1920s, it certainly wasn't always that way. The book was a failure at its 1925 publication compared to Fitzgerald's other works, the Silent film version rather dutifully made is now sadly lost, and Fitzgerald died in 1940 at a personal low and sure he and his work would be forgotten, before the book became a massive success that would cement his place in history as a Great Writer. Thanks to World War II and the book's distribution to American soldiers along with the natural progression of the nostalgia cycle (!!!!) which would've placed the events of the book both pre-Depression and pre-World War II, the book became a success twenty years after its publication, and subsequent popular screen adaptations every generation or so has enshrined the book's place in both pop culture and the public consciousness.
But when you get right down to it, the story at its core, with Fitzgerald's theft from the women in his life and his own sense of entitlement evident within the novel, it's not a great book to have cemented its place in history. While notable and an historic work worth considering, I'll just say it: The Great Gatsby as a whole is not that great.
But! Given that cemented place in history (and the backstory), it's all the ripe for the magic of a reimagining! An author might take Fitzgerald's (and Zelda Fitzgerald's, and Ginevra King's) universe of The Great Gatsby and, well, reimagine it. If somewhere the sort of folks who are getting an aneurysm from the idea of adding not only characters of color, but Queer characters and Queer characters of color to a "classic" story that contains none, let alone having one such Queer character of color be the main character, let me assure them (not that they'll listen) that this isn't just a sloppy insertion of some diversity to check a box, it's an exquisitely, gorgeous written novel, and Nghi Vo's Jordan Baker is a heroine/antiheroine that will stick with you.
Also, it's worth noting that Vo even surpasses Fitzgerald in many, many capacities.
At Gatsby's, the clock stood at just five shy of midnight the moment you arrived. Crossing the main road through the gates of his world, a chill swirled around you, the stars came out, and a moon rose up out of the Sound. It was as round as a golden coin, and so close you could bite it. I had never seen a moon like that before. It was no Mercury dime New York moon, but a harvest moon brought all the way from the wheat fields of North Dakota to shine with sweet benevolence down on the chosen and the beautiful. (pg 20)
(We have a title!)
"I'll call down to the club and have them send something over."
"Not me, I'm afraid I can't eat anything but moonlight and rose petals tonight, Papa." (pg 52)
I knew there was something empty in him before, but now I could see that it wasn't empty all the time. Now there was a monstrous want there, remorseless and relentless, and it made my stomach turn that it thought itself love. (pg 99)
At some point, I landed on my rear in the bushes. I wasn't ill, but my eyes felt too dry and too hot. With my arms around me, I could only hear the refrain I shall live with this the rest of my life and God, is that a long time. (pg 123)
"Come here," I said, and I pulled him down for a kiss.
"You didn't want--"
"I changed my mind. I'm allowed to do that. You are too."
That messy entangling anger had gone out of him, leaving him sweeter and more pliable. I didn't mind the sadness; he wore it like a girl might wear a becoming if old-fashioned veil. It left him open in a way he hadn't been before, raw and pretty and intriguing. (pg 147)
"Oh, Jordan, he loves me so much. I've never felt anything like that. There's nothing like it in all the world, being loved by someone like Jay Gatsby."
She said his name like some kind of incantation, a god if you could own a god. (pg 154)
Also, one of Fitzgerald's most enduring characters, Daisy Buchanan, wasn't treated entirely as a human in the original novel (and we know why). The Daisy Buchanan of The Chosen and the Beautiful is human and messy and complex. Given Jordan's realization that's she's frequently used by Daisy (and the racism inherent in their relationship), making her a one-note villain would've been tempting, but instead, the author frames her racism and privilege as among her other shortcomings of a multifaceted, strange character.
Daisy Buchanan was, underneath her dress waving surrender and her face like a flower, a rather handsome and lazy monster. She wasn't something that stalked her prey for miles through the underbrush. Instead she would lie so still that something unwary might think she was dead, and when they came for her skin, for the reputation of killing her, for her virtue or her wealth, then she would be upon them. (pg 198)
"Come on, girls," [Tom] said with a patience I liked less than his bombast. "Time to go get changed. Nick and that damned drug store mogul are coming over soon."
Daisy took a lazy swipe at him like a bored cat, but she helped me to my feet.
"Oh very well," she said, making a face. "If the great Napoleon tells us we must."
"He was only a little man," Tom said indignantly. "I'm just the opposite."
"Of course you are, dear," Daisy said with such poisonous sweetness that I though she must surely have given the game away. Tom seemed all smiles however, and it came to me that he only ever really took offense when she wasn't needling him. When she was only herself and moody or strange or angry for herself. (pgs 203 and 204)
And interestingly, Jordan is one of the few to see through Jay Gatsby. That doesn't mean she's not attracted to him, though, or he to her.
Gatsby looked at me steadily, long enough to make me uncomfortable.
"You don't like me," he said.
"Is there a reason I should?" I asked.
"Well, you're important to Daisy. We should get along, don't you think?"
I laughed because it felt like such a quaint thing to say. One would almost think that we were normal people.
"I get along with everyone," I said, and he decided to believe me. He came a little closer, close enough that I could smell his cologne, see the black nail on his left hand. Recklessly, I reach out to tweak his tie a little, straightening it. It surprised a laugh out of him. This close, I could see the tiny wrinkles at the corner of his eyes.
"I can be a very good friend to you too, just as I am to Nick," he murmured quietly. "Nick likes me so much. It's only Tom that doesn't. Tom and you."
"Maybe," I said deliberately, "it's because you like to fuck people who don't belong to you."
The smile froze on his face, jagged like slips of lake ice. I couldn't tell where my recklessness had come from, only that the corpse reviver was strong enough that I didn't regret it yet.
"I think you'll find that I only fuck people who belong to me," he said. "But think about it, won't you? I've a lot of friends, here and in DC. It could be that in a short while you could use some friends."
"Think about it yourself," I said with a smile. "They don't want you any more than they want me, or weren't you paying attention?"
There was something raw in his gaze right then, something tapped, something that was suddenly aware that its camouflage was not nearly as good as it had imagined it to be. I had stepped on some secret, obviously, but he had no idea which one, and no idea that I had no idea either. He forced a shrug and a smile.
"Fine. Be that way. Shall we keep it civil for Daisy's sake, or would you like to make your distaste public?"
"I don't think of you enough to care about any of that," I said. "And just because I don't like you is no reason we shouldn't be friends." (pg 179)
The novel's discussions about race and racism and about Queer identity are fascinating, nuanced and complex, and frequently beautiful, and yet fit perfectly into the world of Gatsby. The book makes me feel the way I wanted The Great Gatsby to make me feel, the dangerous and exquisite freedom and art of the 1920s, such a fleeting time, all things considered. The author's characters will stick with you in a way their Fitzgerald counterparts might not, and the themes of the book may be timely to the 1920s, but they're also timely to the 2020s.
We may be living in the age of the reboot (and sequel and prequel) and it can seem tedious, but every so often a piece of art will come along and remind us of why sometimes a reboot and reimagining is absolutely needed.
Notable: The book offers several takes on race, as Jordan is essentially coming to terms with the fact for awhile, she's been the only person of color (particularly the only east Asian) among white people, until she isn't. And the racism spans the board, as (for example) the character of Tom Buchanan warmly welcomes Jordan into their home and social circle and recognizes her as one of his wife's close childhood friends, but that does nothing to stem his own white supremacy.
"This fellow has worked out the whole thing," Tom said, stabbing a finger into the white tablecloth. "It's up to us, who are the dominant race, to watch out or these other races will have control of things.
"You've got to beat us down, of course," I said dryly, and Nick covered a laugh with his napkin.
Tom arched his neck, glaring at me suspiciously as if unsure what I might mean, and next to me Daisy giggled, just a little hysterical, thought this was hardly anything new to us.
"The thing is, Jordan, we Nordics, we've produced all the things that go to make civilization-- oh, science and art, and all that. That's what the Manchester Act wants to protect. Do you see?"
There were a dozen things I could have said to that, ranging in order from least cutting to downright murderous, but then the phone rang and the butler came to fetch Tom from the table. Tom went with a kind of confused irritation, and Daisy's mouth open, and closed again. (pgs 6 and 7)
Jordan isn't even safe from racism from her own "adopted" white family.
"I never thought it would last," said Mrs. Wentworth, thumping her horse-head cane on the carpeted floor. She was a formidable woman who glared about her as if we were going to fight about it. "Demons, foreigners, one's as bad as the other. By all rights, they should have been pushed back the first time we tried to quell the Chinese, begging your pardon, young Jordan."
"Accepted, since I'm not Chinese," I said with a light laugh, but Aunt Justine frowned. (pgs 131 and 132)
Finally encountering another east Asian person:
The guest I had seen had come from his hiding place was now looking around as if he were at the art museum. He was dressed like a workman, without a jacket in gray duck trousers, his braces hanging down around his thighs, a flat cap stuck into his waistband and his shirt sleeves rolled up. When he turned, I saw that he was eating a sandwich, that he was surprised to see me, and that he... looked like me.
I blinked, drawing back a little in surprise to see a face round like mine and dark like mine. I felt an immediate rush of recognition and warmth followed by an almost equal amount of repulsion and panic. When you're alone so much, realizing that you're not is terribly upsetting. (pg 161)
"Cody was a good man," [Tom] said with a slight smile at me. "Think of him every time someone at the house asks for that damned pisco from Chile. He was a Chicago man, through and through, and it's only Chicagoans that drink that stuff."
"And Chileans, possibly," I suggested, but no one was listening. (pg 162)
Summer in New York goes by slowly until it goes by fast, and for the four weeks that took us out of July and into a sullen and ferociously fevered August, I could barely catch my breath. First there was Aunt Justine's difficulty, where we ended up with a few sleepless nights and a live-in nurse, and then there was the riot that took over Brooklyn and Harlem for a full weekend over the Manchester Act, which would bar the way for all unwanted unworthies from a long list of places, while starting the repatriation of those who had, as so many of Aunt Justine's friends put it so delicately, overstayed their welcome. Naturally it didn't specify whether it meant the Chinese, the Irish, the Mexicans, the damned, or the dead that occasionally returned with them, so it was a terrible mess.
Nick asked me if I was worried, and I took him dancing at the Preston when I hate dancing at the Preston because I wanted to answer him even less. I told him that the Manchester Act had nothing to do with me, and that I couldn't even remember being from anywhere else, and his response-- "Prove it" --- made me so angry that I ran off the floor and went home with Jodie Washington. She kept me for a few days until her boyfriend came back from his European tour, and by then, I was ready to make up with Nick, so it mostly worked out. (pg 167)
"You know, I had thought you were a Southern girl," [Gatsy] said. "Like Daisy, like so many others I have known."
I pointed at my face.
"That speaks well of you," I said. "No one else thinks I'm a Southern girl."
"And they shouldn't. You're some East Coast thing, aren't you? Sharp and mean and cold. What a prize you are."
"Don't let on you like me like that," I said. "People will talk."
He grinned, boyish and easy. (pg 180)
I never liked the Plaza all that much, though many of the people I ran about with did. The staff was always a little too stiff about me, a little too curious about who I was there to see, though of course the garden was charming and more at ease. Today at least, the man behind the desk was giving us all a certain look as we rolled in and demanded a place, as Daisy put it, to cool down and to make love. I wasn't sure if it was Tom's frigid Puritan looks or Gatsby's wink that got us through, but the elevator attendant was nothing but cordial as we tumbled in and tumbled out, tipping him extravagantly. (pgs 214 and 215)
"Those [Gatsby] parties," Tom said, shaking his head with theatrical disgust. "I suppose you've got to make your house into a pigsty in order to have any friends-- in the modern world. Nowadays people begin by sneering at family life and family institutions, and next they'll throw everything overboard and have intermarriage between Black and white."
"Well, no one's Black here," I snapped. "Really, Tom."
Tom spared me an irritated look.
"There's nothing for you to get so hot over, Jordan. You know I wasn't speaking about you." (pg 218)
Now's a great time to note that the author uses mostly modern racial language. While this may irritate some in the strive for historical accuracy, in the 2020s, I find it completely understandable.
"Tom, stop," Daisy said. "You're embarrassing yourself."
There was something tense in her voice, and she was turned towards the mirror again, stroking her hair with agitation. It occurred to me that she could see our reflections in the glass. I wondered if the versions of us in the glass were doing much better than we were.
"No, you are," Tom shot back. "You think you can get away with so much more just because you're a woman? You and your little China doll..."
My hand tightened on the glass in my hand. The whiskey was mostly gone so I could likely throw it and storm out without much guilt but Nick's hand tightened on mine, his face pale. In that, he matched Daisy, whose face peeking over her shoulder was as colorless as a mourning lily. They never looked more alike than when they were afraid, and I wanted to scold them both for paying Tom any heed. (pg 219)
This scene is important because it shows that for all of Tom's treatment of Jordan despite his full-throated racism, when it comes down to it, no, his racism and bigotry absolutely includes her. He isn't even angry with Jordan here, he's angry with his wife and just lashing out conveniently at her friend.
And importantly, while Nick Carraway and Jay Gatsby are white-passing, clearly, it's revealed that Nick has an east Asian ancestor. We'll get to Gatsby.
Nick's great-grandmother died just as the war was starting. She was a tiny little lady and age had put camouflaging wrinkles on her face, turned her sleek black hair white, and given her such a stoop that no one was much able to look at her straight on anymore. In her old-fashioned dresses and her small and elegant apartment in Milwaukee, almost no one in St. Paul remembered that she was foreign.
I remembered what Nick had said, that she was born as her missionary parents came off the Carmine on the Gulf of Siam. I wondered if I had seen some kind of family resemblance in his face after all, whether his dark hair was more like mine than Daisy's, whether there was something kept hidden somewhere in his easy handsome features.(pg 235)
The realities of racism are harder to hide from now that Jordan has friends of color:
"We're leaving on Friday," he said. "Bai found us a berth aboard the Princess Titania, and we're out."
I felt very strangely hurt.
"So soon? You told me..."
"They vote on the Manchester Act today, and they're going to pass it." Kai said. "Bai's parents still remember when the exclusion acts rolled through. She lost almost all of her uncles. She wants us gone."
I let that sink in. The Manchester Act was something that Aunt Justine's friends discussed over dinner, it wasn't even mentioned in the smart set that I ran with normally. Sitting in a stolen car with Khai, however, it felt more real than it ever had. (pg 241)
Remember what I said about Gatsby?
"Jay... did something. Made sure that no one saw. He stood up in the car, closed his eyes, and the world went quiet around us. It was frightening. I never saw him do anything like that before, never saw anyone do anything like that."
I thought then that it must have been his infernal powers coming into play. Later, when I learned about his half-Chippewa mother, and when I learned that her other half was Black and not white, I came to a different conclusion. The native nations had taken in plenty of escaped slaves after the Civil War, and the old spells to help the hunters helped them now even when they were the hunted. Two eyes, closed. (pg 249)
Now awakened, Jordan is shocked by her friendship with Daisy, and how utterly clueless and privileged Daisy can be, and even how downright terrible.
"Come with us," she said, her voice warm in spite of the rain. "Come with us. Why go to dirty old Shanghai when you can come to Barcelona with me and Tom? Barcelona's a delight, and we can come back in October, just in time for the best part of fall, won't that be grand?"
I jerked back from her soft touch, my heart pounding, because there had been a chance, not a large one, maybe, but one nonetheless, where I might have gone with her, if only she hadn't forgotten that I might not get to come back.
"Stop," I choked. "Stop, stop, I'm not in love with you, you can't treat me like this."
She looked at me stunned.
"Of course you are," she said, and the thread between us snapped, stinging me hard as I stared at her. The rain flowing down my face suddenly felt warmer, almost like blood.
Of course I am, I thought, but I wasn't Jay Gatsby. Love wasn't enough for me, and Daisy proved it would never be enough for her.
I turned on my heel and ran for the house. (pg 251)
________________________________________
This novel is so wonderfully Queer. While definitions are never explicitly discussed in the book (and they wouldn't be, not really, at the time), Jordan, Nick, and Gatsby are bisexual, and it's pretty heavily suggested that Daisy is asexual.
Jordan goes out dancing at a nightclub, like all good flappers:
I had come with plenty of energy to spare that night, and as the band struck up the first song, I found myself in the arms of a fat Black girl in a white tuxedo, the satin of her lapels gleaming like stars in the soft light. She had long eyelashes that curled up like angel wings, and when she pressed her round cheek against mine, she made my heart beat faster. She was light on her feet, but I wondered if she had mistaken me for someone else because she passed me on at the end of "Broadway Baby."
After the girl in the tuxedo came Maurice Wilder, who struck a strange and exciting chord in me by being the most handsome boy in a flaming red dress.
"Tacky," I teased him, liking the blush that came up on his narrow face when I did, and he pulled me close to hide his face in my hair. Someone should have told him to wear a slip, because I could feel every inch of him through the gossamer fabric, but I was glad no one had told him yet. He let me pull him behind one of the vast Boston ferns to kiss him, but I let him go when he wouldn't let me do more. (pg 93)
He looked at me for moment, blank-eyed, and then he smiled. His eyes got soft, and so did his mouth, and it came to me that he had such a beautiful mouth. It was something I liked on men and women, a beautiful mouth that might kiss me or whisper secrets in my ear or open and let me kiss them... (pg 96)
The author gets so many points about bisexuality (friendly reminder: this term means and has always meant "all genders/regardless of gender" to the Queer community) just so wonderfully right.
[Daisy] might dance with a girl to cause a scene, but anything else made her feel funny. I would have taken it more personally if I didn't suspect that she felt that way about boys too, once the kissing and petting turned to something else. (pg 98)
Like I said, ace Daisy.
I gave [Gatsby] a long look.
"It actually made more sense when I thought you wanted her served up like a bit of cold lapin."
"Don't be disgusting."
"Oh really? Whose cock were you sucking before you spotted me and Miriam Howe?"
"Some expensive boy from Amherst, what does that matter?"
And I could see that to him, it didn't. (pg 100)
While Gatsby longs for Daisy (or at least his idea of her) and dallies sexually with (primarily) rent boys, it's suggested that he and Nick have something that might be a bit more serious than sex, although he was primarily using Nick in the first place to get to Daisy.
"I know that they were planning to stay and then suddenly came East. I know that Tom doesn't want to go back, but Daisy maybe does. But they've settled in the East now, and they're as snug as oysters in a bucket. Or at least, they were until you showed up."
"Me?"
"Yes. You and Gatsby."
[Nick] went as pale as paper at that statement, and I made a face, reaching over to squeeze his hand.
"No, not like that. Gatsby's in love with Daisy. He wants you to invite her over to your house so he can meet her there." (pgs 127 and 128)
Jordan and Nick have a very Queer assignation, and again, it made my bisexual heart proud. QUICK WARNING FOR NSFW LANGUAGE!
He paused when he looked down at my face, his eyes bright as the foil around a candy bar, his mouth a tempestuous red. There was my answer to if he thought I was as beautiful as Jay Gatsby, and it made me smile.
"Get down on your knees," I murmured, pushing down on his shoulders.
"Why?" The confusion in his voice was genuine, and I laughed. It was just a little mean, prep school girl to the boy who worked at the garage, and he flinched, biting his lip.
"You know."
After a moment he did, and he dropped as pretty as you please. I stepped out of my silk drawers, stuffing them into the back of one of my stockings to keep them neat. I hauled up my skirts with one hand and with the other, I took hold of him by the hair and dragged him forward.
"I don't... That is.. I'm not sure how..."
He looked up at me, begging, and I stroked his cheek.
"Well, I'll tell you if you get it wrong, won't I?"
Eager. He was so damned eager. He might not have done it for someone with my precise looks between the legs before, but it's not all that different overall. Skin's skin, and he liked mine. His large hands curled around my thighs, and there was a kind of Middle Western, old religion fervor to how he devoured me. His people weren't that far from the tent revivals that spoke of angels like spinning chariot wheels in the sky and demons under every apple tree, and he chased my pleasure like it might be his very own salvation. (pg 150)
Jordan is sanguine about Nick with Gatsby, maybe because she's having enough romances of her own to keep her busy.
I had brought pajamas along-- slim, silk, and with my initials embroidered on the cuff-- but the night was too stuffy for that. Instead I stripped to the skin and stretched out on Nick's mattress, hoping that he would be done with Gatsby soon. I wondered it he would bring back a touch of Gatsby with him, whether it was the scent of Gatsby's cologne or the taste of Gatsby's mouth on his own. I licked my lips restlessly, turning away from the moonlight, letting my eyes drift shut.
This summer is never going to end, I thought. (pg 182)
Unfortunately, Tom is not as dumb as he looks, not completely.
"What is? it with you and Nick, anyway?" [Tom] asked meaningfully. "Are you friends from the war, or something like that?"
"Afraid I didn't have the honor," Gatsby replied. "We were strangers until he came to one of my parties this summer."
Gatsby refused to care about the menace in Tom's voice, but Nick stiffened next to me. I frowned, putting fingers chilled from my glass against the back of his neck, and he relaxed a little, though not all the way. (pg 218)
"In this heat, you needn't bother speaking at all," I started, but [Tom] was already blundering ahead, lurching to his feet, and glaring at us all in turn as if we had all in our own way challenged him and his American family values. I realized that leaving aside the issue of his own marriage, if it was Gatsby, Nick, and me, we did.
"What I want to know," he continued, gesturing emphatically with his almost empty tumbler, "is how long a man is expected to tolerate this kind of perversity in his own house. They may say it's all in good fun, there's no harm to it, but they never think about the way it erodes the values on which we built this country."
"We?" Gatsby asked, and Tom gave him a startled look, as if not expecting him to admit to his own perversity so quickly. Tom hadn't yet twigged to the fact that there were in fact several kinds of institutions attacking his precious country stretched out in the suite. (pg 219)
It was more than that, I realized, thinking over the nights I had spent at Gatsby's. His house bridged the gap, and it was safe. It was safe for all of us, for me to kiss who I liked, for Nick to kiss Gatsby, for Gatsby to love Daisy, and for Hell to play its games. (pg 223)
Early on in her relationship with Nick, Jordan consults a fortune-telling imp about him, asking if he had any other girls. The imp answers in the negative, and Jordan assumes that while he dallies, she's his primary interest. By the end of their association, however, she learns the truth.
"Did you really love [Gatsby] so much?" I asked.
[Nick] hesitated, and I saw the terrible moment when he realized he had nothing left to give me but the truth. He stared at the floor between us as if it held the answers.
"I still do. I'm not going to stop. It was like no matter what I did, no matter who I met or slept with in France or this summer, it was just him, it was always him... Maybe it always will be him."
I felt as if I had spun around several times and then encouraged to drink a champagne glass full of what turned out to be top-shelf whiskey. My mouth tasted like smoke.
"Who you slept with this summer?"
"That boy from Amherst, Grayson Lydell, Evelyn Bard. None of them could even... no one else compared."
"How could they?" I asked, faint and appalled.
You must always be precise when commanding imps, Mrs. Crenshaw said in my memory. Never say wealth when you can say the precise number of dollars, never say eliminate when you can say murder.
And apparently, never say women when you should have been asking about people. No wonder the singed thing had snickered so upon telling me about the girl from Jersey City.
Nick finally looked up, and noticed my surprise. A red blush swept up his face, not embarrassed, but exposed.
"I thought you knew," he said.
"And you wouldn't have told me if I didn't."
"No. God, you always seemed to know so much."
"Not everything," I had to admit. I suddenly felt very young and very lonely. (pg 253)
While this is a humbling and sad moment for Jordan in an already humbling and sad part of the book, I freely admit to loving "people" over a specific gender being a critical point. Again, the bisexuality!
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One issue the book doesn't touch too much upon is the sexism of the era, although Jordan still feels its affects:
I was a strange combination of bereft and relieved when [Nick] was gone. Even after all our time together, I hadn't quite resigned myself to being a couple yet, half of an equation when the male half could somehow continue as a whole without me. He was gone, I felt more myself, and to celebrate, I downed a surprisingly strong French 75 and took another with me for company as I wandered around through the playground Gatsby had made of his home. (pg 171)
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Given that this is magical realism and with some of the historical accuracy, 2020s versions were a necessity, but that doesn't mean we're not going to still make some notes.
The author invents an interesting 1920s trend:
Of course, the young lieutenant from Camp Taylor still had his soul, and by 1922, Jay Gatsby of West Egg had no such thing.
It was only the year before when the society madcaps went about with a single nail painted slick black, the mark of someone with infernal dealings. It was so fashionable that Maybelline released Chat Noir, its deluxe black nail polish that promised a devilish long-lasting gleam. In the later part of 1921, it seemed as if half of Manhattan's twenty-five-and-under set must have made some kind of infernal pact or another. In 1922, the fad was mostly played out, but a little bit of tackiness was permitted in the very rich. (pg 19)
This was interesting and convincing enough of the period for even a Jazz Age geek like me to do a quick fact-check to make sure it wasn't real (it's not). Given the other trends of the 1920s, it's highly plausible though, so kudos to the author for that especially.
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Final Grade: A
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