Super Sad True Love Story
A Novel
Book - 2010
The author of two critically acclaimed novels, The Russian Debutante's Handbook and Absurdistan , Gary Shteyngart has risen to the top of the fiction world. Now, in his hilarious and heartfelt new novel, he envisions a deliciously dark tale of America's dysfunctional coming years--and the timeless and tender feelings that just might bring us back from the brink.
In a very near future--oh, let's say next Tuesday--a functionally illiterate America is about to collapse. But don't that tell that to poor Lenny Abramov, the thirty-nine-year-old son of an angry Russian immigrant janitor, proud author of what may well be the world's last diary, and less-proud owner of a bald spot shaped like the great state of Ohio. Despite his job at an outfit called Post-Human Services, which attempts to provide immortality for its super-rich clientele, death is clearly stalking this cholesterol-rich morsel of a man. And why shouldn't it? Lenny's from a different century--he totally loves books (or "printed, bound media artifacts," as they're now known), even though most of his peers find them smelly and annoying. But even more than books, Lenny loves Eunice Park, an impossibly cute and impossibly cruel twenty-four-year-old Korean American woman who just graduated from Elderbird College with a major in Images and a minor in Assertiveness.
After meeting Lenny on an extended Roman holiday, blistering Eunice puts that Assertiveness minor to work, teaching our "ancient dork" effective new ways to brush his teeth and making him buy a cottony nonflammable wardrobe. But America proves less flame-resistant than Lenny's new threads. The country is crushed by a credit crisis, riots break out in New York's Central Park, the city's streets are lined with National Guard tanks on every corner, the dollar is so over, and our patient Chinese creditors may just be ready to foreclose on the whole mess. Undeterred, Lenny vows to love both Eunice and his homeland. He's going to convince his fickle new love that in a time without standards or stability, in a world where single people can determine a dating prospect's "hotness" and "sustainability" with the click of a button, in a society where the privileged may live forever but the unfortunate will die all too soon, there is still value in being a real human being.
Wildly funny, rich, and humane, Super Sad True Love Story is a knockout novel by a young master, a book in which falling in love just may redeem a planet falling apart.
In a very near future--oh, let's say next Tuesday--a functionally illiterate America is about to collapse. But don't that tell that to poor Lenny Abramov, the thirty-nine-year-old son of an angry Russian immigrant janitor, proud author of what may well be the world's last diary, and less-proud owner of a bald spot shaped like the great state of Ohio. Despite his job at an outfit called Post-Human Services, which attempts to provide immortality for its super-rich clientele, death is clearly stalking this cholesterol-rich morsel of a man. And why shouldn't it? Lenny's from a different century--he totally loves books (or "printed, bound media artifacts," as they're now known), even though most of his peers find them smelly and annoying. But even more than books, Lenny loves Eunice Park, an impossibly cute and impossibly cruel twenty-four-year-old Korean American woman who just graduated from Elderbird College with a major in Images and a minor in Assertiveness.
After meeting Lenny on an extended Roman holiday, blistering Eunice puts that Assertiveness minor to work, teaching our "ancient dork" effective new ways to brush his teeth and making him buy a cottony nonflammable wardrobe. But America proves less flame-resistant than Lenny's new threads. The country is crushed by a credit crisis, riots break out in New York's Central Park, the city's streets are lined with National Guard tanks on every corner, the dollar is so over, and our patient Chinese creditors may just be ready to foreclose on the whole mess. Undeterred, Lenny vows to love both Eunice and his homeland. He's going to convince his fickle new love that in a time without standards or stability, in a world where single people can determine a dating prospect's "hotness" and "sustainability" with the click of a button, in a society where the privileged may live forever but the unfortunate will die all too soon, there is still value in being a real human being.
Wildly funny, rich, and humane, Super Sad True Love Story is a knockout novel by a young master, a book in which falling in love just may redeem a planet falling apart.
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Publisher:
New York : Random House, c2010.
Edition:
1st ed.
ISBN:
9781400066407
1400066409
1400066409
Branch Call Number:
FICTION Shteynga Gary 07/2010
Characteristics:
334 p. ;,25 cm.
Opinion
From Library Staff
From Library Staff
A rich commentary on the obsessions and catastrophes of the information age and a heartbreaker worthy of its title.
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Add a CommentTwo years ago, elizali, called this dystopia novel "prescient". As America ramps up its civil war as this is written, the novel is once again prescient.
This book is so prescient right now. Shteyngart somehow manages to hit the mark of politically relevant/hopeless romantic/downright hilarious within the confines of this book. Forever a fan.
This book was odd and unsettling and a bit off-putting, but I really kind of loved it. I don't know that it's for everyone. People who enjoy dark humor, are a bit, perhaps fatalistic and like dystopian fiction would be into this. Guess that's me.
Intelligent and sharp commentary on culture, especially American, and what could happen if we don't pay attention. However, the satire was funny and innovative but my appetite for the amplified scenes of pop culture eroded after the first few chapters. And the protagonist was just not someone I wanted to get to know.
Much as I enjoy this writer's clever observations the satire was clunky and so overwrought it became tiresome quickly. I contrast that with his more recent bio, "Little failure", which I found interesting, relatively honest, and better suited to his style.
Didn't like
Some interesting ideas about how things could become in the future, though overall contrived and nothing mind-blowing. Some terrific descriptions and turns of phrase. I think the best thing about the book is the insightful and interesting take on what is it to be the child of an immigrant. But overall, a bit tiresome and significantly longer than it needed to be. I feel like he read Infinite Jest and was inspired, but this pales in comparison. Also, I found the ending really weak, like he didn't know how to conclude things and just tacked on an update. I'll probably forget all about this book within weeks; other than its title, just for its inaneness.
Unreadable. I kept hearing how clever this book was, and indeed, the first few pages had me laughing aloud several times. But the unremitting whininess of the protagonist, and the thoroughly unlikability of his love interest, turned me so completely off that I put the book down for good in the middle of the second chapter. File under "life is too short."
Not only is it not super sad, it's not even mildly sad. Or true. Maybe "Super Sucky Untrue Love Story" wasn't catchy enough. Set in a not too distant future (or is it really now?!), Shteyngart's obnoxious, self-conscious novel is part sci-fi, part satire, part twee romance. The love story part smacks a tiny bit of male fantasy, as the guy is older, neurotic and balding, while the woman is younger, cooler, hotter and more Asian. As a satire, it's neither funny nor astute, offering little more commentary than, hey, we love our technology. I will say the last few pages are pretty good, but, otherwise, this is pretty sucky.
I found it hard to enjoy this novel as the main character was entirely unlikeable and the so called satire of future culture struck me as someone with little knowledge of current day unintellectual culture trying really really hard to make a joke. I just did not enjoy it.