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Product Description
Daily Telegraph
A brilliantly funny series of escapades... Witty, inventive and fast-moving... a triumph
Review
'Rowdy, ribald, funny... Let's call this superb debut the real thing - an acute, accurate, intelligent look at America in the nineties' Esquire 'This picaresque debut transcends its personal genesis to become an all-around great American story ... If Henry Miller were Russian, this is a book he might have written' Time Out New York 'An adventurous, hilarious narrative ... Shteyngart is a supremely talented, funny and original writer' Guardian 'Witty, inventive and fast-moving ... a triumph' Daily Telegraph
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Unknown Binding
I fell in love from the start: wry, wicked wit combined with a gift for effortless description made this novel a joy to read.This is a satire with a cruel, self-obsessed character called Vladimir Girshkin in pursuit of sex and riches whose quest takes him from a keenly observed New York across the Atlantic to a mythical eastern European land full of the youthful detritus of the West and moribund relics of the Soviet era.The prose is refreshing and ebullient, infused with a rich, panoramic intelligence that can swoop on the minutest detail to make a telling point about American excesses and foibles. I was often left reeling in admiration. At times the oblique, knowing authorial intrusions are reminiscent of Nabokov, but this is neither pastiche nor imitation. The cruelty of the wit harks back to writers like Saltykov-Shchedrin or more recently Bulgakov so Shteyngart is in impressive company. Above all it is funny without compromising its serious intent.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The characterization of Vladimir Girshkin is excellent, from how he looks and dresses (which morphs through the book), to how he thinks about himself, his family, his ethniticity, to how he perceives the other Russians and Americans around him. Many humoristic moments as Vladimir, in an effort to get himself out of a dead-end life, gets in with deeper and crazier schemes to extract money and respect from different criminal elements, all the while building (or rebuilding?) the ego inside the man. The characterization, as a trip of self-discovery, is very well written.
But I did find myself forcing to finish. I did end up caring about the characters, esp. Vladimir and Morgan in the end, so I pushed on wanting to see what happened to them. But the plot bogged down, taking turns that made the humourously ludicrous ones in the beginning of the story seem normal. You have to suspend your reality checks for a novel like this, but it just got harder to do toward the end. The clever literary references and play on words at the later half of the novel didn't make me chuckle or think as much as the ones in the beginning.
I will read Mr. Shtenyngart's next novel with anticipation. Writing any novel is hard work, and I'm glad Gary pressed on with number 2.
But I did find myself forcing to finish. I did end up caring about the characters, esp. Vladimir and Morgan in the end, so I pushed on wanting to see what happened to them. But the plot bogged down, taking turns that made the humourously ludicrous ones in the beginning of the story seem normal. You have to suspend your reality checks for a novel like this, but it just got harder to do toward the end. The clever literary references and play on words at the later half of the novel didn't make me chuckle or think as much as the ones in the beginning.
I will read Mr. Shtenyngart's next novel with anticipation. Writing any novel is hard work, and I'm glad Gary pressed on with number 2.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Unknown Binding
"I like this novel because..." This is a real "twentysomething" novel, a bit of a guilty pleasure and the sort of book I pretentiously thought I should have stopped reading by now (I'll be ... in January). I thought the first part, still taking place in Manhattan, was wonderfully entertaining, but that it slightly (but only slightly) lets down afterwards. Shteyngart overdoes the satire a bit in the main section of the book, set in Prava: it would seem he relishes the part of the clever-clever, more-worldly-than-the-other-expats (who are trying much harder) narrator a little too much. The "marshmallow target" for satire that is the eager young English-speaking expat community has been pointed out here before. There's a superiority to his drawn-out ridicule that goes beyond just the benefits of having an "outsider's eye". I think his humor works best in his descriptions of Rybakov, the Russian sailor (loved the phoney, staged naturalization ceremony). The dialogues between Vladimir and Rybakov are some of the funniest in the book. Renders the collected works of Arnon Grunberg (Dutch-Jewish novelist of "Blue Mondays" and "Silent Extras") almost redundant.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Hilarious
This is a very funny, original, totally deranged novel which can't easily be summed up except to say it's very funny and reminded me of John Kennedy Toole's Confederacy of Dunces. Read more
Published on 13 July 2004
Cheap laughs made up for by real hilarity
"I like this novel because..." This is a real "twentysomething" novel, a bit of a guilty pleasure and the sort of book I pretentiously thought I should have stopped reading by now... Read more
Published on 16 Dec 2003 by kardra
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