The book takes a beat too long to find its rhythm, but when it does, it hits home—and hard. Watts powerfully depicts the struggles many Americans face trying to overcome life’s inevitable disappointments. But it’s the compassion she feels for her characters’ vulnerability and desires that make the story so relevant and memorable.

Surprise: Watts’s novel is unfairly freighted with this allusion to its distant, white ancestor. If you know Fitzgerald’s story intimately, it might be interesting, in some minor, academic way, to trace the lines of influence on her work, but in general that’s a distraction. Watts has written a sonorous, complex novel that’s entirely her own ... [the] plural narrator, knowing and wry, is just one of the novel’s rich pleasures. Without yoking herself to some cumbersome Greek chorus, Watts has invented a communal voice that’s infinitely flexible, capable of surveying the whole depressed town or lingering tenderly in a grieving mother’s mind ... Little happens in this novel in any traditional sense, but it seems constantly in motion because Watts is so captivating a writer ... All of this is conveyed in a prose style that renders the common language of casual speech into natural poetry, blending intimate conversation with the rhythms of gossip, town legend, even song lyrics ... What Watts has done here is more captivating than another retread about the persistence of a crook’s dream. She’s created an indelible story about the substance of a woman’s life.

Watts writes about ordinary people leading ordinary lives with an extraordinary level of empathy and attention. 'One of the tricks of time,' an older character realizes, 'is that your own ordinary life took on a sweetness in the retelling' ... The Great Gatsby is, at its core, a book about wanting things. Watts is interested in what black people are allowed to want — and allow themselves to want — in 21st-century America, and what it takes to venture a real claim for a place, a home ... The ways in which No One Is Coming to Save Us intersects with and veers away from Fitzgerald’s familiar plot can be very rewarding. (In one small but perfect joke, Gatsby’s dock becomes J?J’s deck.) Every departure can be seen as a sly comment on what it means to be a person of color in today’s America ... When Gatsby didn’t get what he wanted, the story could only end with his death, but Watts’s characters are people who have seen generations of dreams stymied and thwarted — for their kin, their community and themselves. Rather than giving up if the game doesn’t go their way, they do what they’ve always done: Forget the rules, shake up the players and turn Gatsby’s green dock light gold.

Watts picks and chooses which elements of the F. Scott Fitzgerald story to keep (car accident, yes; wild parties, no). The looseness frees her to build a narrative that stands on its own terms ... Like Fitzgerald, Watts excels at physical descriptions that give texture to the world of the novel ... Though disjointed in places, the novel conjures the 'Is that all there is?' mood of Gatsby to great effect. To call Watts 'promising' would diminish her significant accomplishments, which include a Whiting Award and a Pushcart Prize for her short fiction. In the best possible way, this is the kind of book that makes a reader yearn for her next one.

It should not go unsaid that the central characters are African-American, a deliberate choice in a narrative that doesn’t so much adapt as wink at a classic that kept those kinds of characters on the margins. For the most part, they are still on the margins. But No One Is Coming to Save Us pivots the default lens to spotlight their experience — the poverty surrounding them, the pain they harbor and the peace in letting that pain go. In the hands of a less competent author, this could have devolved into mere voyeurism into the traumas and triumphs of black people. Instead, Watts, with her knowing touch and full-bodied prose, delivers a resonant meditation on life and the comfort both in dreaming and in moving forward.

Watts’ novel, although far from perfect, would stand on its own even without that [Gatsby] inspiration, but knowing what she’s doing lends extra depth to some of her story’s more startling plot twists. It’s a brilliant, timely idea — demonstrating that a quintessentially American classic is just as effective with a largely black cast ... The premise and plot are so clever that one forgives the novel’s main flaw — the sort of loosey-goosey writing one often sees in works by young writers. Watts’ characters’ dialogue is quite well done — so much so that we blanch with irritation at the paragraph or two of psychological explanation that seems to follow almost every conversation ... [Watts] has done something marvelous here, demonstrating that the truths illuminated in a classic American novel are just as powerful for black Americans.

...[a] stunning debut novel ... I found this book improves upon the classic through its modern interpretation. A far more wistful, eloquent, heartfelt and humane novel, Watts’ story creates a world empty of tycoons and swimming pools, but rich with characters working their way through the highs and lows of late capitalism ... It’s a testament to Watts’ steady vision and incisive language that she manages to convey the raw anger and loss felt by this tangled family. She channels Toni Morrison’s masterful direct address with great success ... The overwhelming power of this remarkable novel rests in its ability to face excruciating truths with optimism through its singing prose. A necessary retelling of an American classic made better through its contemporary perspective.

If you read this novel while wearing Gatsby goggles, don't let them obscure a strong story of hope and pain and longing in an extended African-American family ... occasionally, Watts doesn't do enough to differentiate her characters' mental voices, allowing one person's musings to overlap with another's. But Watts excels at showing the dense relationships among characters as they strive for hope and reinvention ... Though its title might hint at despair, No One Is Coming to Save Us is anything but a pessimistic downer. Watts has not produced another Gatsby , but she has written a memorable and moving tale that deserves to be read without constantly squinting for that green light at the end of Daisy's dock.

Despite the plural narrator’s often chatty informality, the novel is infused with haunting lines about the persistence of the past and the danger of hope. These aphorisms represent the accumulated wisdom of a town full of disappointed dreamers ... the storyline, although it veers toward soap opera melodrama in places and occasionally lingers on particular scenes for too long, still feels like a tribute to American literature’s greatest stories of dejected idealists.

...an accomplished debut novel ... Watts’ gently told story, like Fitzgerald’s, is only superficially about money but more acutely about the urgent, inexplicable needs that shape a life.