★★★★☆ The doubly fictional Nick Carroway

Don't Sleep with the Dead

Nghi Vo

Nghi Vo's Don't Sleep with the Dead is a sequel to The Chosen and the Beautiful, her brilliant retelling of The Great Gatsby. The Chosen and the Beautiful is, in my opinion, an improvement on Gatsby. (However, to evaluate that claim properly you need to understand that I have never liked Gatsby, so improving on my estimation of it is not a great feat.) The Chosen and the Beautiful was told from the point of view of Jordan Baker. Vo's version of Jordan is a far more attractive and interesting character than Jay Gatsby ever was. Also, there is magic in The Chosen and the Beautiful. Aside from the ordinary, utility kind of magic everyone knows about, characters of Southeast Asian descent (including Jordan) practice magics based on folding and cutting paper.

Don't Sleep with the Dead takes place some 22 years after the end of The Chosen and the Beautiful, in a New York City that belongs to an America on the edge of the the Second World War. The characters don't exactly know that, but they are old enough to remember World War I and they can see the threat of something equally awful on the horizon.

Don't Sleep with the Dead is about and by (i.e. in the first-person voice of) Nick Carroway. Nick is the fictional narrator of Gatsby. In The Chosen and the Beautiful and Don't Sleep with the Dead he is doubly fictional. To protect the real Nick, his family used paper magic to create a simulacrum of the young Nick. This simulacrum was sent to the war in Europe, while real Nick stayed behind safe in Canada. That, at least, was the plan. In fact, Real Nick died in a traffic accident, whereas the Paper Nick came back alive from Europe, or as nearly alive as paper can be.

Paper Nick is a writer. He has published several novels, including one that is clearly the one we know as The Great Gatsby. He is also a newspaper columnist.

The story begins when Nick hears a voice in his head that seems to be Jay Gatsby, or his ghost. Nick tracks him down.

Don't Sleep with the Dead is as brilliant as Vo always is. I did not, however, enjoy it as much as The Chosen and the Beautiful. The reason is simple: Nick is just a less interesting character than Jordan. Deep in his paper heart, Nick is a rather conventional man. Jordan shows up briefly in Don't Sleep with the Dead, although only at the far end of a telephone line. Even so she steals the show every time she appears.

Don't Sleep with the Dead on Amazon

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