I was excited when The Great Gatsby entered the public domain last year, and Anna-Marie McLemore’s Self-Made Boys did not disappoint! This young adult remix of The Great Gatsby provides layers of complexity and nuance to the familiar characters and story. This reimagining of the American classic tells the story through the queer and Latinx lens of Nicolás Caraveo, a seventeen year old transgender boy, who is invited to stay with his cousin Daisy in New York while he works on Wall Street as an analyst. After he arrives in New York, he learns that Daisy has been hiding her heritage and lightening her skin and hair to pass as white and succeed in finding a socialite husband (Tom Buchanan, who is aged down like the rest of the characters, but still very clearly an antagonist). When Nick meets his neighbor, Jay Gatsby, he learns about Jay and Daisy’s romantic past and agrees to help Jay win Daisy back from Tom. As Nick becomes more involved in Daisy and Jay’s lives, he starts falling for Jay.
The remix doesn’t shy away from the heavy-handed symbolism or the scenes of excess and opulence Gatsby is famous for, which is satisfying for fans of the original, but it also provides plenty of subversions that make it different enough to be worth a read. The changes made to the characters (ages, race/ethnicities, sexualities) only serve the characters positively- giving them more depth and complexity, sometimes even making them more sympathetic; and the changes to the plot make a lot of the story more digestible and emotionally satisfying than the original. Unlike the original Great Gatsby, Self-Made Boys doesn’t shy away from discussing the lives of those on the margins, outside of the glitz and glamor of socialite life- people of color, poor people, and queer people. In fact, all of the main characters fall into two or three of those three categories.
Self-Made Boys brings a fresh lens to The Great Gatsby, giving these well-worn characters a new life. The romance between Nick and Jay is tender, filled with longing and care, and the other relationships allow the novel to highlight the ways in which all sorts of queer love (platonic and romantic) have flourished throughout history, even if under the radar. This is definitely something I would recommend for fans of the original Gatsby story or anybody interested in an authentic, yet heartwarming, look at queer history through a fictional lens.
I did not know how badly I needed this book until I read it, but now I’m so happy I picked it up!