Super Sad True Love Story, by Gary Shteyngart

Super Sad True Love Story, by Gary Shteyngart

This is the third novel I’ve read by this author, and that’s all the novels he has published.  As soon as the next one comes out I’ll gobble it up.  I may even read his memoir, much as I am not fond of memoirs.

This one is the story of Lenny Abramov, a Russian Jewish immigrant to the US, which I’m guessing is Gray Shteyngart’s situation.  In contrast to the other two books, this one is less about his Russian-ness and his Jewishness.  The setting is a not-too-distant world in which youth, wealth, and sexuality have taken near total possession of the culture.  Everyone carries an ‘apparat’, a device not unlike a smart phone.  Walk through a room and it displays people’s current credit score, personality rating, f*ckability rating, all of which rise and fall according to behavior.  Instead of “verbaling” (talking), people mostly “teen”, which is sort of emailing using a site called GlobalTeens.  

Lenny falls for a young Korean girl who lives in, and appears to thrive in, the shallow pop culture.  His problem is that he is a real person with doubts, introspection and feelings with which he is mostly in touch.  Parallel to the turmoil in his life is a breakdown of order--political, economic, military--and Lenny has to decide where he stands in it all.  Plenty of plot.  The writing is brilliant.  

Shteyngart paints the characters with the things they say, the way they say them, and with striking descriptions, similes and metaphors.  I can turn to any random page and find a jewel.  I’ll do it now, using the random number generator on my iPhone calculator.  First three digit number from 001 to 331, the last page of the book.  Okay 240.  Eunice, the Korean girlfriend, reacting to an unwanted admonition from Lenny, “The dead smile came on with such full force that I thought a part of her cheekbone had cracked.  ‘That’s fine’, she said.”  Again, 004.  Here’s Lenny writing in his diary.  “Take a look at me, diary.  What do you see?  A slight man with a gray, sunken battleship of a face, curious wet eyes, a giant gleaming forehead on which a dozen cavemen could have painted something nice, a sickle of a nose perched atop a tiny puckered mouth, and from the back, a growing bald spot whose shape perfectly replicates the great state of Ohio, with its capital city, Columbus, marked by a deep brown mole.  Slight.  Slightness is my curse in every sense.”

I’m obviously very fond of Shteyngart’s writing.  It may not appeal to a very large audience.  I haven't read any reviews yet; I should do that.  But I know that I liked it, looked with anticipation to every next page, and thought about it a lot afterward.  Good stuff.