Status Updates From The Chosen and the Beautiful

“He’s not quite all there, is he, dear?” she asked after he left. “Something missing in the eyes.”

“What he’s got is fine for me.”

yeah so this is the best book ever written

this book is the hand rolled european slim of books. my god

Wasian Nick Carraway?

This latter half is fine. I am still stuck on having Daisy basically say “Tom can keep Pam, He was the one that wanted her anyway”. Because it feels like it’s either supposed to be a parallel to the Beautiful Fool scene that is in GG but not here. Or it’s just supposed to be a record scratch moment to shock the audience. Either way it feels like character assassination that Vo isn’t even going to commit to

Nit picky since this trope has kind of been popularized and dropped since this book was published in ‘21, but having Daisy know that Gatsby wants to meet with her at Nicks house in order for her the be “more active” in the plot just feels insecure. A woman can not know things and the framing can still be feminist. It’s fine for characters to be caught off guard, that’s how you build tension in a story.

I think it’s interesting that Vo writes Jordan and Daisy to be super close companions as debutantes which is not the vibe in GG. I feel like it’s meant to beef up and mirror Jordan’s experience of the outside world parallel to how we see Nick experiencing Tom’s Apt and Wolfsheims Bar+Biz. But it does end up fixating a lot on Daisy and giving her characteristics that just don’t exist in GG and conflict