For Xochitl Gonzalez, Brooklyn isn’t just a setting, but a living archive. And in her newest novel, “Last Night in Brooklyn,” out April 21, she’s determined to preserve a version of the borough she feels is already slipping from memory.
“It felt like I needed to mark this territory,” Gonzalez told Brooklyn Paper. “This version of Brooklyn — the one I knew, the one that shaped me — doesn’t exist in the same way anymore.”
Her third book, following the acclaimed “Olga Dies Dreaming” and “Anita de Monte Laughs Last,” is both a love letter and a time capsule. The story follows Alicia, a recent Yale graduate who returns to Brooklyn and starts working at an ad agency. There, she meets a new group of people, including the mysterious party girl La Garza. Alicia quickly gets entangled in her “glamorous” life, and in parallel, discovers secrets about her own past.
Set in the mid-2000s, “Last Night in Brooklyn” captures a Fort Greene and greater Brooklyn that buzzed with possibility — where cheap drinks, late nights and sprawling friend groups defined a generation just before everything changed.
A Brooklyn that once was
The novel began, Gonzalez said, with frustration.
After reading a piece that framed DeKalb Avenue as a newly “discovered” hotspot, she found herself bristling.
“People have been hanging out there since the ’90s,” she said. “But it made me realize, New York memory is short.”
That realization became the backbone of the book, a story rooted in a Brooklyn that predated luxury high-rises and $20 cocktails, when neighborhoods like Fort Greene served as creative hubs for Black and Latino communities and young artists carving out their futures.
“It was a working-class place where people really looked out for each other,” Gonzalez said. “That culture, that generosity, is what I didn’t want to lose.”
A Gatsby for Brooklyn
While readers may recognize echoes of “The Great Gatsby,” Gonzalez didn’t set out to write a traditional retelling. Instead, the inspiration came from questioning how different classic stories unfold when centered on women.
“What would it look like if a woman tried to win someone back the way Gatsby does?” she said. “It just wouldn’t happen the same way.”
That question led her to reimagine ambition, love and reinvention through a distinctly Brooklyn lens, one shaped by financial precarity and hustle.
Set in 2007, the novel unfolds on the brink of the financial crash and the start of the Great Recession. The looming shift creates a quiet tension.
“You know something bad is coming,” Gonzalez said. “That becomes its own kind of presence.”
Built on real places and real people
From now-closed institutions like Century 21 to the early days of the Barclays Center, the novel is rich with hyper-specific Brooklyn references. Gonzalez crowdsourced memories from friends — asking about favorite bars, restaurants and long-lost hangouts — to build a world that feels both intimate and expansive.
“It was amazing how consistent the feeling was,” she said. “Everything just felt possible.”
That sense of possibility extends to the novel’s characters: a rotating cast of roommates, creatives, and strivers, many loosely inspired by Gonzalez’s own circle. “When you’re in your twenties, everyone feels like your best friend,” she said. “I wanted that energy on the page.”
At its core, “Last Night in Brooklyn” is less about place than about people — specifically, the deep, messy relationships that defined pre-smartphone social life.
“We’ve been seduced into making everything frictionless,” Gonzalez said. “But knowing people well takes effort. And that effort is worth it.”
Back then, she recalls, the connection was analog: phone calls, email chains, and nights out that stretched for hours. It was also, crucially, affordable. “You could go out with $10 and have a whole night,” she said. “That created a sense of generosity.”
A voice that sounds like home
Gonzalez purposefully chose New York native Elizabeth Rodriguez, known for her role in “Orange is the New Black,” to narrate the audiobook.
“If this person isn’t from New York, I don’t want it,” Gonzalez said. “It had to sound right.”
“ I just thought she literally had a richness to her voice, but also her ability to get in there and just tell that story,” she added. “[Rodruigez] had this ability to capture these other characters energy. I would listen to her do anything. “
Gonzalez added that her ideal place in Brooklyn to listen to the audiobook would be a “walk and listen.”
“I would totally go through Fort Greene, cross Fulton Mall, go down to the Promenade, Brooklyn Heights into Gowanus and back over to Smith Street,” she laughed. “Then, make your way to Red Hook and go to the VFW Hall and have a drink when you’re done.”
A guidebook for Brooklyn living
For today’s readers—especially those navigating a more expensive, more digital Brooklyn — Gonzalez hopes “Last Night in Brooklyn” offers more than nostalgia.
“I think of it as a field guide to friendship,” she said. “Help people out. Make introductions. Build your community.”
Because even as Brooklyn evolves, she believes its core identity can endure — if people hold onto it.
“Brooklyn is Brooklyn for a reason,” Gonzalez said. “And I just want to make sure that what it was doesn’t get lost.”
“Last Night in Brooklyn” will be released April 21 by Flatiron Books.
