Gary Shteyngart’s new novel shows a marriage falling apart from the eyes of a ten year old in the milieu of a fascist America somewhere in the relatively near future. Vera is trying to navigate school and friendships in a “gifted” education system full of high expectations and entrance exams largely motivated by her step-mother who clearly prefers her younger brother. Conversations about this with her AI chess set convince her to try to find her birth mother in Ohio (where she met her father in college at “the school of fading repute” which is definitely not Oberlin). While this is happening her father is trying to sell his magazine to someone who doesn’t like its general political direction so they can go from having “cultural capital” to “capital capital.”
I read “Our Country Friends” in ~2022 and thought it was good, all things considered. There are a lot of similar characters here: pretentious writer husband with a borderline drinking problem that resembles the author, exasperated wife, Korean-American daughter, strained relationships all around. And apparently the “cultural capital” vs “capital capital” thing is a bit of a leitmotif for Shteyngart. Which is all to say that this feels almost like a continuation of some previous works despite the plots being non-connected.
But it’s been a few days and I’ve really forgotten about most of it. Maybe I prefer Shteyngart’s “reporting” for the New Yorker or the Atlantic (on martini’s and probably tax write-off luxuries)–here the wit and “Russian pessimism” really shine. Nothing wrong with novel and I enjoyed it, but it won’t stick with me and that’s fine.
Leave a Reply