In this haunting novella, Nghi Vo transforms the fabric of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s world into something more magical, more visceral, and infinitely more queer. Don’t Sleep with the Dead serves as both a companion and continuation to Vo’s acclaimed novel The Chosen and the Beautiful, taking us deeper into the supernatural undercurrents of the Jazz Age and beyond, exploring what happens when paper memories refuse to stay buried.
A Spectral Return to West Egg
Set in the ominous winter of 1939-1940, as Europe plunges into war and America teeters on the precipice, Vo’s novella reintroduces us to Nick Carraway—not Fitzgerald’s passive observer, but Vo’s reimagined version: a man of paper and memory, created to replace the real Nick who never returned from war. Nearly twenty years after the events of The Great Gatsby, Nick has built a life as a columnist and author, achieving modest success with his novel about that fateful summer of 1922.
But on a snowy night after Christmas, everything changes. During a police raid at Prospect Park, Nick encounters someone impossible—Jay Gatsby, who should have been dead for seventeen years, murdered in his swimming pool. This ghostly encounter sends Nick spiraling through a labyrinth of memory, identity, and infernal magic, forcing him to confront not just Gatsby’s nature but his own constructed reality.
Beyond Gatsby: Expanding the Magical Universe
Vo’s greatest strength lies in her ability to seamlessly blend the familiar with the fantastical. Where The Chosen and the Beautiful reimagined Gatsby’s tale through Jordan Baker’s perspective as an adopted Vietnamese girl with paper-cutting magic, Don’t Sleep with the Dead expands this supernatural universe through Nick’s eyes.
The world Vo builds is both recognizable and disturbingly altered:
- Infernal influences pervade New York society, with devils running establishments like “the Gates”
- Paper magic gives life to constructed beings, including Nick himself
- The dead have begun returning across Europe as war looms
- Memory functions as both weapon and salvation
Vo’s worldbuilding never feels expository—rather, it emerges organically through Nick’s experiences, revealed through encounters with characters like March (a devil with whom Nick has history) and the anatomical beauty (a wax woman who keeps infernal records).
Exploring Identity Through Constructed Memory
The novella’s most compelling aspect is its exploration of constructed identity. Nick, created through paper magic to replace the real Nick Carraway who died after WWI, embodies this theme perfectly. He possesses memories that aren’t truly his, lives a life that was meant for someone else, and carries guilt for actions he didn’t personally commit.
When Nick discovers a horrific buried memory about a young woman named Daphne Blackwood—a memory belonging to the original Nick—Vo brilliantly examines questions of responsibility, culpability, and selfhood. If Nick possesses these memories, does he also inherit the guilt? Can he separate himself from the man whose face he wears?
This exploration resonates deeply with LGBTQ+ themes of constructed identity and authenticity, creating a story that feels both historically grounded and urgently contemporary.
Prose Like Midnight Jazz
Vo’s prose remains the standout element of her work. Like a saxophone solo at 3 a.m., her writing is both melancholy and seductive, capturing the wistfulness of Fitzgerald while adding her own distinctly queer, supernatural edge:
“The good thing—the only good thing—about the worst finally happening is that it has happened.”
Her descriptions of supernatural elements never fall into cliché territory. Whether depicting the terrifying transformation of a devil or the subtle wrongness of August 7th (a purchased day from 1922, preserved in a Gowanus warehouse), Vo’s language remains precise, evocative, and chillingly beautiful.
A More Intimate Gatsby
One of the novella’s greatest strengths is its intimate portrayal of Nick and Gatsby’s relationship. Where Fitzgerald only hinted at Nick’s admiration for Gatsby, Vo explicitly explores their romantic and sexual connection. This isn’t gratuitous modernization but rather an organic development of themes that were always present in the subtext of the original.
Through this lens, Gatsby’s obsession with Daisy and Nick’s obsession with Gatsby take on new dimensions. Both men are chasing idealized versions of love, both are trying to recapture something they never truly possessed, and both are ultimately constructed beings trying to find authenticity in a world that denies them.
Critique: Pacing and Complexity
While Don’t Sleep with the Dead is a stunning achievement in many ways, it’s not without flaws:
- Pacing issues arise in the middle section, where Nick’s quest to find Gatsby sometimes feels like an extended montage without sufficient escalation
- Dense worldbuilding occasionally obscures rather than illuminates, particularly regarding the rules of paper magic and infernal contracts
- Some secondary characters lack development, serving primarily as supernatural obstacles in Nick’s path
- The resolution feels rushed compared to the deliberate pacing of earlier sections
For readers unfamiliar with The Chosen and the Beautiful, the novella might prove challenging to fully appreciate, as it builds upon the magical system and alternate history established in that novel.
The Chosen Series: A Queer, Magical Literary Revolution
Don’t Sleep with the Dead represents the continuation of what Vo began with The Chosen and the Beautiful—a radical reimagining of classic American literature through a lens that is simultaneously magical, multicultural, and queer.
In The Chosen and the Beautiful, Vo transformed Daisy Buchanan’s friend Jordan Baker into a Vietnamese adoptee with paper-cutting magic, exploring themes of belonging, otherness, and desire against the backdrop of the Jazz Age. That novel retained the basic framework of Fitzgerald’s original while infusing it with demonic bargains, magical elixirs, and a distinctly queer sensibility.
With Don’t Sleep with the Dead, Vo takes us beyond the original narrative, examining the aftermath of tragedy and the persistence of memory. Together, these works create a fascinating conversation with Fitzgerald’s canonical text, neither replacing nor diminishing it but rather expanding its possibilities.
Verdict: A Haunting, Essential Read
Despite its minor flaws, Don’t Sleep with the Dead stands as an essential read for anyone interested in:
- Creative reimaginings of classic literature
- LGBTQ+ historical fantasy
- Supernatural noir with literary sensibilities
- Explorations of identity, memory, and desire
Vo has created something truly unique—a story that honors its source material while transforming it into something new, a tale that feels simultaneously like a fever dream and a revelation.
For fans of Vo’s previous work, including her Singing Hills novellas (The Empress of Salt and Fortune, When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain, Into the Riverlands, and Mammoths at the Gates) and her novels (Siren Queen and The City in Glass), this novella delivers the lyrical prose and boundary-pushing imagination they’ve come to expect. Readers who enjoy Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House or Alyssa Cole’s That Could Be Enough will find similar thematic resonance here.
Don’t Sleep with the Dead reminds us that stories, like ghosts, never truly die. They transform, they haunt, and sometimes—in the hands of a writer as skilled as Nghi Vo—they find a new kind of life altogether.
Strengths:
- Gorgeous, evocative prose
- Innovative expansion of the Gatsby mythology
- Complex exploration of queer desire and constructed identity
- Seamless blending of historical and supernatural elements
Weaknesses:
- Occasional pacing issues
- Some underdeveloped secondary characters
- Might prove challenging for readers unfamiliar with Vo’s previous work
In the end, like its protagonist, Don’t Sleep with the Dead exists in a liminal space—between homage and reinvention, between memory and desire, between the world as it was and the world as it might have been. And like the best ghost stories, it lingers long after the final page.
