What would “The Great Gatsby” look like if it were set in Brooklyn, N.Y.? In 2007?
“Last Night in Brooklyn,” the third book from New York Times bestselling author Xochitl Gonzalez, is the answer.
AUDIOBOOK REVIEW
“Last Night in Brooklyn” by Xochitl Gonzalez. Read by Elizabeth Rodriguez.
Published by MacMillan Audio
7 hours 37 minutes
$22.99
Alicia Canales Forten is not living her best life, even if it seems that way on paper. She’s engaged to a future doctor, from the right family. While he’s away at school, she’s working in advertising, living with her mother and saving for her upcoming nuptials. She knows something is wrong when she doesn’t want to make the weekly bus trip to visit him. And then one weekend, she doesn’t go. Instead, she attends a party in the Fort Greene neighborhood of Brooklyn, where she realizes she’s stifled by the life she’s supposed to want.
Alicia puts her engagement on pause and trades her high school bedroom for a shared apartment in Fort Greene, where she has a front row seat to the comings and goings of the mysterious La Garza, a larger-than-life fashion designer whose epic house parties are the place to be seen. Suddenly, Alicia receives an invitation to attend a La Garza party. When the invitation arrives out of the blue, Alicia readily accepts and quickly becomes enmeshed in La Garza’s life. But invitations don’t come without expectations, such as an introduction to Alicia’s wealthy banker cousin, who La Garza is seeking more than an investment from.
Set against the backdrop of the looming 2008 fiscal crisis and housing market crash, as well as the beginning of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign and the gentrification of Brooklyn, Gonzalez poses the question of what the American Dream means for BIPOC individuals and what compromises/sacrifices have to be made to achieve it.
Gonzalez uses the structure of “The Great Gatsby” to lure you in, but then keeps you engaged with fuel from her other influences (which she noted on an Instagram post), including “Sex and The City,” “Bright Lights, Big City,” “There Was Nothing There” and “Champagne Supernovas.” There’s fashion, hustlers, movers and shakers, love and betrayal. And there are the pertinent questions Gonzalez asks through her rich characters and lucious prose, which are reminiscent of those posed in her sophomore release, “Anita de Monte Laughs Last,” a poignant, fictional look at how women — specifically Latina and other BIPOC women — are treated by an art world dominated by white, Anglo-Saxon, protestant, elite, wealthy men. The audiobook kept me on the edge of my seat as I listened to it while traveling to and from work.
“Last Night in Brooklyn,” available as a hardcover and as an audiobook narrated by Elizabeth Rodriguez, best known for her role as Aleida Diaz in Netflix’s “Orange Is the New Black,” does not disappoint. Rodriguez’s narration adds a layer of depth to the story that will keep you hooked and wanting to listen for hours. The only disappointing thing about this book was that it came to an end.
AUDIOBOOK REVIEW
“Last Night in Brooklyn” by Xochitl Gonzalez. Read by Elizabeth Rodriguez.
Published by MacMillan Audio
7 hours 37 minutes
$22.99