Brooklyn was the place to be in the years between 9/11 and the start of the Great Recession. Even as the shady finance bros who would later cause the economy to crash circled like starving hyenas, creativity in music, design and art was exploding. So was money. Even a member of the precariat like Alicia, the narrator of Last Night in Brooklyn, could pay the rent and still spend her free time frequenting swinging hot spots under the gaze of the Watchtower building. One star of this milieu is La Garza, a brilliant couturier whose loft apartment is the neighborhood party place. Alicia lives across the street, and one day gets the invite to join the festivities—sound familiar?
You guessed it—Xochitl Gonzalez’s latest novel takes much from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, with a smidgen of Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence. But these revelations spoil nothing, for there’s plenty that’s new. For one thing, in Last Night in Brooklyn the starstruck narrator and the mysterious, charismatic go-getter whose tale she narrates are both Puerto Rican women.
Through Alicia, La Garza rekindles her relationship with Alicia’s cousin Devon. Married and rich enough to buy a brownstone, he is La Garza’s Daisy. As he’s crass and his mind is always on money and how to get more of it, he could also be Tom. At least he helps La Garza’s fledgling fashion company go public. But in any case, Devon’s wife, Marla, poses a problem for La Garza’s plans.
Gonzalez is a writer whose straightforward prose downplays its subtlety and brilliance. Her characters are arresting, and she is Whartonesque when it comes to describing the folkways of a particular group of people at a particular time. This is seen in her characters’ attire, the music they make and listen to, the valences of money and class, and ultimately, the moral red lines they shouldn’t cross. As Alicia puts it, “We weren’t raised to leave our messes for other people to clean up.” In retellings, and in life, the more things change, the more they stay the same.