Review: Last Night in Brooklyn by Xochitl Gonzalez
There are countless novels set in New York. Far fewer feel like they actually belong to it.
There are countless novels that use New York as a backdrop. Far fewer feel accountable to it.
In Last Night in Brooklyn, Xochitl Gonzalez writes with the kind of specificity that suggests not just familiarity, but memory of a Brooklyn that existed just before everything became more polished, more curated, and infinitely more expensive.
The novel follows Alicia, a Brooklyn local navigating between two very different but deeply intertwined worlds. There is her cousin Devon, newly arrived in Brooklyn with his wealthy, tightly wound wife, Marla, whose presence never quite settles naturally into the neighborhood around them. And then there is La Garza, Alicia’s neighbor: an ambitious Puerto Rican fashion designer with the kind of charisma that makes everyone around her feel slightly more alive. Alicia finds herself caught between them, in awe of La Garza while still feeling loyal to Devon and through that the life orbiting him.
The novel has been described as a riff on The Great Gatsby, and the comparison works. La Garza becomes the Gatsby figure here: magnetic, striving, always just on the verge of something larger. Devon slips into a role more reminiscent of Daisy Buchanan. The inversion allows Gonzalez to explore ambition, class, race, and gender in a way that feels unique. This is a city filled with people trying to become something, and the novel understands how close ambition and performance often are. HUGE kudos for that.
What makes the book stand out, though, is the feeling that you are moving through New York with someone who actually knows it. Not the version built for tourists or TikTok montages, but the real places, the real social dynamics, the real characters. Reading it feels like being brought along on a journey by someone who knows which party is worth going to, which bar everyone ends up at after, and which people in the room are actually important.
Gonzalez captures early-2000s Brooklyn, particularly Fort Greene, with warmth. The art scene and party scene feel lived-in rather than researched. Brooklyn is depicted as communal, homey, come-as-you-are. Manhattan, meanwhile, exists as something more performative: polished and image-conscious. The contrast still exists today.
A sequence surrounding La Garza’s Hamptons show is especially well rendered.
This novel captures a very particular New York ecosystem: young, ambitious people finally making enough money to participate in the city they have been dreaming about. There is a specific excitement to that stage of life, and the novel understands it completely.
Not every emotional beat lands with equal force. The realization that Devon and La Garza cannot ultimately be together feels underwhelming for the weight the relationship carries throughout the novel. Also, some secondary characters also feel more atmospheric than necessary.
Still, those are minor flaws in a novel that succeeds at something much harder: giving such lived depth to New York.
This is a book for people who remember Brooklyn before it became content. Or, for people who understand the strange energy of being young, ambitious, slightly broke, and convinced the city might still have something waiting for you. More than anything, it is a reminder that New York has always belonged as much to the people trying to become something there as it does to the people who already have.
