- Paperback: 336 pages
- Publisher: Granta Books (2 Sep 2010)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1847081037
- ISBN-13: 978-1847081032
- Product Dimensions: 21.3 x 13.5 x 2.5 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 170,686 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Super Sad True Love Story
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Product Description
Review
'Shteyngart's ventriloquism is remarkable, cleverly observed and highly amusing'
--Guardian
'Gary Shteyngart's wonderful new novel is a supersad, superfunny, superaffecting performance' --Scotland on Sunday
'A fine contribution to dystopian literature' --The Times
`Shteyngart balances spiky, knowing social commentary with bucketloads of tenderness' --New Statesman
`The writing is never less than stylish and witty, and the sense of disaster is unfailingly lyrical'
--Scotsman
--Guardian
'Gary Shteyngart's wonderful new novel is a supersad, superfunny, superaffecting performance' --Scotland on Sunday
'A fine contribution to dystopian literature' --The Times
`Shteyngart balances spiky, knowing social commentary with bucketloads of tenderness' --New Statesman
`The writing is never less than stylish and witty, and the sense of disaster is unfailingly lyrical'
--Scotsman
Product Description
New York, Summer, Very near future, Economic collapse, tanks in the streets, riots in Central Park, defeat in Venezuela, books are quaint artefacts, what's left of the indebted United States is about to be parcelled out to the rising nations of Finance-London and China-Worldwide, and what's left of interpersonal relations can be summarized by a couple of flashing statistics on attractiveness and wealth. But Lenny Abramov is too in love to notice any of it. The son of working-class Russian immigrants, a bumbling minor functionary in a company that just may hold the secret to eternal life, and the reluctant star of a show called "101 People We Need To Feel Sorry For", he has fallen way too hard for the imperious Eunice Park, a blistering, beautiful Korean-American, a seductive shopper and brilliant money-spender who still knows how to speak in sentences, and a true child of her times. As the country around them explodes into a million glittering pieces, the two will discover whether love is still possible in a world where words have lost their meaning, and where every touch, embrace and kiss could be mistaken for a commodity.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Firstly, this is a great book - sad, funny, satirical; it's got the lot. The author seems to keep writing similarly themed books but each one in turn gets closer to being the "great" novel. If you imagine each book as "bearish Russian/russian american has romance and misadventures because they're a bit of a misfit" you won't be far off, just that each iteration offers something slightly different - just read Absurdistan and The Russian Debutante's Handbook to see.
It's actually part of a great American Artistic tradition, typified by people like Woody Allen and Philip Roth - I'm thinking Annie Hall [DVD] [1977] or The Human Stain. These guys come out with great works which all have one thing in common - a character who is pretty similar to the author himself gets to have sex with someone who's hot! I'm assuming this is just some sort of revenge of the nerds!
That said, this review is supposed to be about the book. Steyngart does a brilliant job of constructing an alternative near-future. America is bankrupt, and the world is dominated by China and other emerging economies. Privacy no longer exists as a combination of ipod style devices and a sort of neo-facebook broadcasts every personal detail, from sexual attractiveness to credit rating. The book is genuinely funny and has at its heart a love story between a mismatched couple as things start to fall apart.
Definitely worth a read.
It's actually part of a great American Artistic tradition, typified by people like Woody Allen and Philip Roth - I'm thinking Annie Hall [DVD] [1977] or The Human Stain. These guys come out with great works which all have one thing in common - a character who is pretty similar to the author himself gets to have sex with someone who's hot! I'm assuming this is just some sort of revenge of the nerds!
That said, this review is supposed to be about the book. Steyngart does a brilliant job of constructing an alternative near-future. America is bankrupt, and the world is dominated by China and other emerging economies. Privacy no longer exists as a combination of ipod style devices and a sort of neo-facebook broadcasts every personal detail, from sexual attractiveness to credit rating. The book is genuinely funny and has at its heart a love story between a mismatched couple as things start to fall apart.
Definitely worth a read.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The book is a romance set in a dystopian youth-obsessed near-future where China is supreme, a neo-facist United States is collapsing and reads rather like a cross between Clockwork Orange, Brave New World and Annie Hall. It manages to be funny, romantic and terrifying simultaneously and often feels worryingly prophetic.Like much science fiction it is more about today than the future.
29 of 32 people found the following review helpful
A Witty, Hilarious Dystopian Love Story from Our Greatest Living Satirist, Gary Shteyngart
25 July 2010
Format:Hardcover
Had Neal Stephenson written "Snow Crash" as a dystopian love story, I'm not sure whether he could have equaled Gary Shteyngart's latest, greatest, novel; a memorable exploration of romantic love set amidst a dystopian near future United States. "Super Sad True Love Story" crackles with much of the same high powered kinetic energy and swift pace of Stephenson's groundbreaking cyberpunk novel - the very first to offer a memorable comedic strain of cyberpunk science fiction - but it is so much more, a brilliant satire of clashing American immigrant values and a well paced, well conceived, romantic love story between the most unlikely of protagonists; thirty nine year-old Russian-American Lenny Abramov , and his much younger lover, twenty four year-old Korean-American Eunice Park. Shteyngart excels in exploring the inevitable cultural clash between immigrant Korean and Russian cultures, as New York City and the rest of the United States heads relentlessly towards both economic and sociological implosion. Here he relies on crisp, fast-paced dialogue which may remind some readers of David Foster Wallace's, often laced with pathos and sharp satirical wit.
Without question, Shteyngart's new novel is science fiction, even if much of the science fictional aspects of the tale are often pushed aside, as the author gives his readers full, undivided, attention to the romantic twists and turns of Abramov and Park's unlikely romance. Shteyngart's depiction of a New York City in the full brunt of a dystopian collapse, echoes Rick Moody's novella "The Albertine Notes" (from Moody's novella collection, "The Omega Force: Three Novellas") in rendering a similarly stark, quite bleak, urban landscape (And one which offers far more verisimilitude in depicting a near future New York City which Big Apple readers and others might recognize as potentially plausible.) But a more apt comparison Is with Matt Ruff's "Sewer Gas Electric: The Public Works Trilogy" for his humorous, often irreverent take, on New York City's impending doom. Like Ruff's mid 1990s cyberpunk classic, it is one of the best depictions of this city I've come across from within the literary realm of science fiction.
"Super Sad True Love Story" seems destined to become one of this year's critical and popular literary successes. It is certainly one of the best - If not the best - novels of this year. Shteyngart's reputation as our foremost living American satirist is secured with this novel's publication. His latest novel is a much more revealing look at human relationships than his earlier "Absurdistan", and one that is much livelier in its depiction of romantic love and satire. However, I do hope his future work exhibits much of the same literary range exhibited by the lesser known Matt Ruff (whom I regard as the greatest living literary alumnus, along with Shteyngart, of our alma mater, New York City's Stuyvesant High School); "Super Sad True Love Story" represents a major first step in such a direction.
Without question, Shteyngart's new novel is science fiction, even if much of the science fictional aspects of the tale are often pushed aside, as the author gives his readers full, undivided, attention to the romantic twists and turns of Abramov and Park's unlikely romance. Shteyngart's depiction of a New York City in the full brunt of a dystopian collapse, echoes Rick Moody's novella "The Albertine Notes" (from Moody's novella collection, "The Omega Force: Three Novellas") in rendering a similarly stark, quite bleak, urban landscape (And one which offers far more verisimilitude in depicting a near future New York City which Big Apple readers and others might recognize as potentially plausible.) But a more apt comparison Is with Matt Ruff's "Sewer Gas Electric: The Public Works Trilogy" for his humorous, often irreverent take, on New York City's impending doom. Like Ruff's mid 1990s cyberpunk classic, it is one of the best depictions of this city I've come across from within the literary realm of science fiction.
"Super Sad True Love Story" seems destined to become one of this year's critical and popular literary successes. It is certainly one of the best - If not the best - novels of this year. Shteyngart's reputation as our foremost living American satirist is secured with this novel's publication. His latest novel is a much more revealing look at human relationships than his earlier "Absurdistan", and one that is much livelier in its depiction of romantic love and satire. However, I do hope his future work exhibits much of the same literary range exhibited by the lesser known Matt Ruff (whom I regard as the greatest living literary alumnus, along with Shteyngart, of our alma mater, New York City's Stuyvesant High School); "Super Sad True Love Story" represents a major first step in such a direction.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Worst book ever!!
This is the first time I ever write a book review in Amazon, I've always read reader's review upon other books SO if you're reading reading this, DONT EVER READ THIS BOOK!!! Read more
Published 2 days ago by Monica
A sad love story in the next century
If that is the way life will be in the next century, I don't think I want to get there. America is sold to China. There are riots all over the place. Read more
Published 19 days ago by O. Faulkner
Love Story? Where?
Dreadful. Utter, total, navel gazing tripe. I'm sure Mr Shteyngart considers himself terribly clever, but this book was a case of the Emperor's New Clothes - other reviews seem to... Read more
Published 1 month ago by Jack
Sad, it's true, but enjoyable
This is a sad love story indeed. It's hard not to like the lead character and it's also hard to understand the love interest. Read more
Published 1 month ago by A. Butler
What the hell was that!
Have to say that while I always read the customer reviews for a book, and this one was a 99p daily special, I was not really prepared for what I had bought
This was a... Read more
This was a... Read more
Published 2 months ago by Paul
not got to it yet
Delivered on time and in great condition as I've come to exprect from amazon. Bought this with a group of new reads for 2012 so haven't got to it yet so no idea how good the book... Read more
Published 3 months ago by LittleBear1
A trenchant yet compassionate satire of our times
Shteyngart's third novel is the wittiest attack on the first decade of the 21st century I've read in any form, fiction or non-fiction. Read more
Published 3 months ago by SN
Super, Super, Super!
Deliciously written, I swallowed it whole, not wanting to miss a moment.
I cared about the characters and wanted to know how it would all end for them. Read more
I cared about the characters and wanted to know how it would all end for them. Read more
Published 7 months ago by CharlieByrd
Enjoyable, if you manage your expectations.
In the near-future, China is in the ascendancy, the US economy is in free-fall, face-to-face interaction is under siege from permanent connections to social networking and on-line... Read more
Published 8 months ago by mogwins
Super boring love (?) story
I bought this book as I read a review about it, in which it was hailed as a great book, and the description I found interesting. Once it arrived, I started reading it. Read more
Published 10 months ago by agneslil
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