Don’t Sleep with the Dead by Nghi Vo [Fantasy Review]

Summary 💬

Nick Carraway―paper soldier and novelist―has found a life and a living watching the mad magical spectacle of New York high society in the late thirties. He’s good at watching, and he’s even better at pretending: pretending to be straight, pretending to be human, pretending he’s forgotten the events of that summer in 1922.

On the eve of the second World War, however, Nick learns that someone’s been watching him pretend and that memory goes both ways. When he sees a familiar face at a club one night, it quickly becomes clear that dead or not, damned or not, Jay Gatsby isn’t done with him.

In all paper there is memory, and Nick’s ghost has come home.

Goodreads

Review ✍🏻

Here I am reviewing another wee novella about which I don’t have too much to say. Rereading The Chosen and the Beautiful prior to picking up Don’t Sleep with the Dead would have seved me well. Apparently, I’d forgotten almost everything unique that Vo had developed about Nick’s character, lol. And it’s even there in the jacket copy (“paper soldier”)! Technically, Don’t Sleep with the Dead is a companion novella and not a direct sequel. However, readers who have read both The Great Gatsby and The Chosen and the Beautiful will be the ones best primed to enjoy Don’t Sleep with the Dead.

As a Gatsby retelling fan, I appreciated that Don’t Sleep with the Dead takes place well after the end of the original story, providing a true conclusion for the story of Nick and Jay. I haven’t read any retellings set after the story – or I should say, I haven’t read any continuations.

In my mind, I have a spectrum on which I place Nghi Vo novels and novellas. It looks something roughly like this: pure fantasy on the left end (Singing Hills cycle), historical speculative fiction in the middle (Siren Queen), and weirder speculative fiction on the right (The City in Glass). I’ve found my personal favourite Vo stories are the historical spec fic ones. I’d place Don’t Sleep with the Dead somewhere between middle and right, compared to The Chosen and the Beautiful which I’d place more in the middle.

In some ways, Don’t Sleep with the Dead brought to mind C.L. Polk’s Even Though I Knew the End. This may be a bold statement for me to make, given that I don’t recall much about Even Though. 😅 I would say Don’t Sleep is grimmer, darker, more surreal. But both stories focus closely on two queer lovers dealing with devil interference. I think it’s fair to say if you enjoyed one, you’ll enjoy the other.

The Bottom Line 💭

Though it doesn’t quite match the charm and wonder of The Chosen and the Beautiful (hard to do when Jordan is no longer the central character!), Don’t Sleep with the Dead provides a satisfying conclusion to the most curious parts of Nick Carraway’s story.

Further Reading 📰

🍂 Author website
🍂 Reviews: L @ Broken Engines, Dobbs @ Goodreads
🍂 Related: I’m developing a solid archive of Nghi Vo reviews! Historical spec fic: The Chosen and the Beautiful or Siren Queen. Storytelling-focused fantasy: the first two books in the Singing Hills cycle. Spec fic that’s a little more out there: The City in Glass.

Do you have a favourite retelling of a classic story?