★★★★★

I didn’t enjoy reading The Great Gatsby in high school. A clear product of the early 1900s, its societal critiques felt dusty and distant rather than daring, with enough problematic elements to frequently make me cringe. A century later, Ryan Douglass gives us the sharp, relevant Gatsby we actually need in The Great Disillusionment of Nick and Jay.

Setting the opening during the utter devastation of the 1921 Tulsa Massacre grounds the entire story in a horrific reality Fitzgerald largely ignored. This narrative choice completely reframes the original critique of the American class system, a devastating, necessary examination of how racial violence and exclusion are the very foundation upon which American wealth and class are built and maintained. Douglass emphasizes this point with Nick’s experience at West Egg. That specific feeling of achieving access but never quite belonging—of straddling two worlds and being truly seen by neither—hit me hard.

This is the vulnerable space where Nick’s relationship with Jay thrives, making their bond the complex, compelling heart of this story, full of dangerous temptations and devastating thrills. The story excels because it grounds that classic pursuit of happiness in unfortunately timely issues of racial and sexual identity and systemic injustice. And Douglass used the historic setting to full effect, elevating Jazz Age New York almost to a character of its own, depicting the 1920’s Black, Queer experience with unflinching realism.

While The Great Disillusionment of Nick and Jay arrives a full century after Fitzgerald’s original, that’s kind of the point. It powerfully demonstrates that the secrets, the cruelty, and the desperate pursuit of love against rigid societal rules haven’t faded, they’ve just changed party clothes. It’s a sharp, smart, and necessary entry to the Young and New Adult spaces that should be required reading a century later.