Don't Sleep with the Dead by Nghi Vo

Published by Tordotcom on April 8, 2025

Don’t Sleep with the Dead is marketed as a companion to Nghi Vo’s The Chosen and the Beautiful, a book that allows F. Scott Fitzgerald’s character Jordan Baker to provide a woman’s perspective on The Great Gatsby. Before I read Don’t Sleep with the Dead, I was unaware of its companionship with The Chosen and the Beautiful, a novel I didn’t read. That’s what I get for paying little attention to marketing materials when I choose books. I’m certain that a familiarity with the earlier work would have enhanced my incomplete understanding of this novella.

Nick Carraway is on “the wrong side of forty.” He’s living in New York City, working as a columnist at the Herald Tribune, and trying to put 1922 behind him. Jay Gatsby died that year but when Nick finds himself in an alley where gay men congregate, about to be stomped by the police, he believes he is rescued by Gatsby.

When Nick calls Jordan in Paris to tell her that he saw Gatsby, she’s not surprised. She tells him that the dead are coming back in France. “Old soldiers, mostly.” They can’t speak because their throats are blistered by mustard gas.

And then, as if Gatsby’s reincarnation isn’t sufficient, the story becomes strange. Nick tells a story about his grandfather’s brother, who came to America and was drafted into the Civil War. “In the two-room shack with the river roaring in the spring flood, Leith Carraway used his old Sheffield razor to loosen his face from his head and traded it for another.” Nick’s mother gives him a less glamorous explanation for his granduncle’s slashed face, but Nick believes “that was where it started, the Carraway belief that duty could be put off on someone else, and that if you only made the right sacrifice, spilled the right blood using the right name, that fate might be delayed or even distracted.”

We then learn that this Nick is also an imposter. Nick went to Canada when he was conscripted to fight in the first World War. A talented relative cut out a paper doll and turned it into a replacement Nick. The paper doll Nick went to war in Nick’s place. The original Nick died in a car accident shortly after the war ended and the paper Nick took over his life.

Strangeness abounds in the novella. Nick bargains with the devil because he wants to learn what happened to Gatsby in Hell. The devil sends him to a woman made of wax. And so on.

The devil alters its appearance at will and Nick’s granduncle is not the only character who swaps faces. “One night, drunk, I’d met March at the Morocco and he’d put on Gatsby’s face for me.” All this was a bit much for me, although I appreciated the imaginative take on Fitzgerald’s novel and the urgency with which the story is told. Still, unless wielded by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, I’m not a fan of magical realism.

I credit Vo for her creative and elegant prose style. Unfortunately, the novel makes so many references to events and characters in The Chosen and the Beautiful that I became quite lost. I can’t judge the story fairly as a companion to the earlier novel because I lack the necessary context. I'm reviewing it as a standalone work, perhaps unfairly, because that is how it is marketed. My guess is that readers who enjoyed The Chosen and the Beautiful will enjoy the companion novella. For other readers, I can only recommend reading The Chosen and the Beautiful first (if you’re a fan of magical realism) and, if you enjoy it, moving on to Don’t Sleep with the Dead to learn the rest of the story.

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