(This review is my own opinion and NOT affiliated with any other literary entity)
"New York is for those who do first and dream second. L.A. is for those who dream first and do second." Karen Tanabe's The Sunset Crowd takes The Great Gatsby out of 1920s Art Deco New York City and sets it on L. A'.s sunny but hazy Sunset Strip. Standing in for the triad of Daisy, Gatsby and Nick are a trio of women. Socialite Daisy is represented by Evra Scott, Hollywood progeny and owner of the hottest boutique in L. A. Gatsby becomes Theodore Leigh, a production assistant who speaks fluent Chinese and belts out Tom Waits - with Tom Waits. Chronicling everything a la Nick is photographer Beatrice Dupont, her camera a metaphor for Gatsby's ever watchful eyes.
While the characters of Gatsby dreamed more than did, their Los Angeles counterparts are doers. Evra works hard to make her store a unique must shop destination. Theodora Leigh toils away at a job for which she is overqualified, waiting for her big break as a movie producer. Evra's boyfriend and (Bea's old school chum) Kai de la Fair wants to write the perfect screenplay. Bea photographs rockstars, models, and actresses, at parties, premieres, hotels - anyone who appears anywhere to look beautiful and be told how beautiful they look.
Reading The Sunset Crowd is like viewing The Great Gatsby through a kaleidoscope. With each turn of the kaleidoscope the image changes ; Bea is both Nick and Gatsby as she pines for Kai, her high school crush. In one view through the kaleidoscope Theodora is an adorable new friend, someone exciting who shakes things up in a good way. With another turn of the kaleidoscope she is a more nefarious Gatsby, manipulating and lying to get what she wants. In L. A. public images, personas, ideals, and friendships are always changing, shifting, becoming something new.
If The Sunset Crowd is a retelling of Gatsby, it's a feminist one, complete with a denim vagina. Women show their bodies freely in sexy clothes - or often nothing at all. The novel discusses sexual assault, as well as public opinion about sexual assault. Women want to get ahead in Hollywood, but only get so far, even in a very feminist era. The novel is about female agency, the right to express yourself as a woman without judgment and to not be judged by your ambition.
With Bea as narrator we experience the novel through her eyes as much as through the lens of her camera. And what readers see is glitz, glamour, and a gruesome reality that not everything is as it appears and sometimes is much much worse. Bea grows weary of her Los Angeles life, the lies, her friends being personalities rather than people. After the novels tragic denouemont Bea is ready to begin again. Instead of being "borne back ceaselessly into the past," Bea instead tells readers "I walked--I ran--into the red morning."
