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Super Sad True Love Story: A Novel |  | Author: Gary Shteyngart
Publisher: Random House
Category: Book
List Price: $26.00
Buy New: $11.25
as of 9/6/2010 13:08 CDT details
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Seller: ISBN
Rating:  59 reviews
Sales Rank: 111
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Pages: 352
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9.4 x 6.5 x 1.2
ISBN: 1400066409
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN: 9781400066407
ASIN: 1400066409
Publication Date: July 27, 2010
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Amazon.com Review
Amazon Best of the Month, August 2010: Welcome to the day after tomorrow. In Gary Shteyngart's near-future New York, the dollar has been pegged to the yuan, the American Restoration Authority is on high security alert, and Lenny Abramov, the middle-aged possessor of a decent credit score but an absurdly low--and embarrassingly public--Male Hotness rating, is in love with the young Eunice Park. Like many of the clients of his employer, the Post-Human Services division of the Staatling-Wapachung Corporation, he'd also like to live forever, but all he really wants is to love Eunice. And for a time, despite the traditional challenges of their gaps in age and ethnicity and the more modern hurdle of an oppressively networked culture that makes your most private identity as transparent as the Onionskin jeans that are all the rage, he does. Super Sad True Love Story is as corrosively hilarious as you'd expect from the satirist of Absurdistan and The Russian Debutante's Handbook, but what may surprise you are the moments when the satire hits bedrock and the story becomes--no air quotes required--sad, true, and very much a love story. --Tom Nissley
Product Description
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.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 59
 Super Funny Dystopian Love Satire: A Review July 6, 2010
K. Harris (Las Vegas, NV)
90 out of 110 found this review helpful
Almost unclassifiable, "Super Sad True Love Story" is an unorthodox tale that defied every expectation I had going into it. So I may not know how to describe the novel concisely to convey its successes, but I can say that I'm in love with this "Love Story."
In a beguiling mix of humor, pathos, and intrigue--Gary Shteyngart has written a topical, disturbing, and believably prescient satire of the near future. Taking cues from his previous works "Absurdistan" and "The Russian Debutante's Handbook," protagonist Lenny Abramov is of Russian descent. From a Jewish immigrant family settled in New York, Lenny has achieved some success selling immortality to the upper echelon of the income bracket. In a technological world, success is not only measured--it is broadcast. Receivers transmit instant credit ratings, personal communication devices evaluate attractiveness quotients, and books have become a digitized (not to be read, but to be scanned for information). It is, to be sure, a world of instant gratification where to be without media is to be devoid of life itself.
When sad sack Lenny meets the beautiful, yet immeasurably damaged, Eunice Park--he falls instantly in love. Reluctantly, Eunice does begin to date Lenny. Despite their incalculable differences, the two form a relationship as much about necessity and usefulness as it is about genuine emotion. Oblivious to the political climate, where New York is systematically being co-opted into a police state, the two form an almost perfect co-dependent bond. But as the world around them starts to splinter, so too must Lenny and Eunice come to terms with whether or not their relationship can survive.
Picking up "Super Sad True Love Story," I wasn't sure what I was getting into. What I did NOT expect, however, was a novel filled with Orwellian nightmares brought so vividly to life. As many times as I chuckled at Shteyngart's vision of this dystopian future, I was also disturbed by how much our society actually seems to be moving that way. It is a stunning accomplishment as a whole. As a satire, it works. As light sci-fi, it works. As a relationship drama, it works. One of my favorite books of the year, easily, "Super Sad True Love Story" is a mesmerizing tale. Important and entertaining, I was "Super Sad" to finish this story.
Coming Soon to a City Nearby? August 23, 2010
Yours Truly (New York, New York USA)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
It's apparent from the outset of Super Sad True Love Story that the shadow of the failed Soviet Union propels the imagination of Gary Schteyngart and his fictional narrator, Lenny Abramov. Few Anglo-Americans, myself included, are as willing to connect the dots that could point to the demise of our society, but Schteyngart creates a compelling scenario.
I walked around in a Russian-induced melancholy for much of the time it took me to read this novel. It might help that I live in New York City where much of it is set, but most of Schteyngart's satirical creations will capture the fancy of any alert human being--the electronic devices that upscale characters wear to communicate and keep track of their ratings on everything from sex appeal to credit, the constant online shopping of Lenny's girlfriend, Eunice Park, the transparent "onionskin" jeans that women wear to display their genitals, and most of all the Post-Human Services division of the Staatling-Wapachung Corporation, where Lenny works. Its mission: eternal life on earth for High Net Worth Individuals.
Schteyngart pulls no punches about the brutalities visited upon the old, the dark-skinned, the uneducated, and Low Net Worth Individuals, as the poor are known. The police have been replaced by the National Guard, there is but one acceptable political party, and the dollar is pegged to the yuan. It is Lenny's mission to negotiate this compromised world not only for himself but for his Russian Jewish immigrant parents, Eunice, and her Korean immigrant family as well. The novel's success rests upon the nearly seamless world of the near future, both familiar and malignant, that Schteyngart creates.
When I read that a bookstore in Martha's Vineyard had given President Obama a copy of Jonathan Franzen's Freedom (next on my list), I only wished that they'd thrown this novel, too. In Super Sad, "The Lenny Abramov Diaries" are said to be a slavish emulation of the final generation of American "literary" writers. I trust this not the last generation, certainly Schteyngart is an original, and I hope our leaders will read it.
Super Sad, Satirical, Witty, Socially Relevant, Love Story June 27, 2010
Book Dork (Southern California)
32 out of 44 found this review helpful
OMG. ROFL. JBF. Hold on, my apparat is telling me that Amazon is now AmazonSafewayWellsFargoBlack&Decker and that its value on the Yuan-pegged market is going through the roof, although they've also just announced they're discontinuing actual books.
If you haven't read Gary Shteyngart's newest novel Super Sad True Love Story you either think I'm crazy or borderline illiterate, but rest-assured, that was just my feeble attempt to introduce you to the high-tech, massively materialistic, financially failing, no-so-distant future described in the book. America is on the brink of a financial meltdown and has completely lost its grip on international dominance, resulting in an instability that greatly affects middle-aged Lenny and the much younger (and apathetic) woman he loves, Eunice.
Super Good:
- Ah, the irony. And satire. And old-fashioned humor. You think this recession is bad? Just wait until you read about Shteyngart's description of what the world is like when professionals compete for retail jobs, your too-low FICA score gets you deported or shipped off to fight in Venezuela, and China controls the markets. Shtenygart makes fun of our hearty technology habits (thick skin, Facebook, thick skin), need for labels, and lack of literacy.
- The characters are seemingly shallow, but, in true Shteyngart fashion, are actually quite humorous and multi-dimensional. They stand for different members of society and represent a multitude of responses to the events that occur in the text.
- This text truly is a smart, relevant social, political, and economic commentary.
- At the heart of this book are the relationships- just because the world around us is changing, the same struggles we face with family, friends, and lovers are still the same.
Super Minor Complaints
- I really hate the title of this book. Sorry.
- The framing device for the text, revealed at the end, was unnecessary.
- I love the narrator, and the overall tone of the novel, but I have to say the work as a whole feels quite similar to the other two books Shtenygart has written. I understand that he has found his niche, but I hope he doesn't get too comfortable there and stop challenging himself (ala Chuck Palahniuk).
This novel is a great read, and it will make you question your role in today's economy and forward movement- what do we value enough not to change?
Shteyngart's best yet September 2, 2010
Mal Warwick (Berkeley, California)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Imagine the USA 10 or 15 years down the road. The dollar is pegged to the yuan, and a tyrannical right-wing government is in power. The divide between High Net Worth Individuals and Low is a chasm that cannot be spanned. The country is bogged down in a losing war in Venezuela. Everyone carries an "apparat" -- an always-online device that broadcasts its carrier's Male or Female Hotness, health and nutritional benchmarks, and provides access to intimate correspondence. Not only are there no secrets from the government. There are no secrets among the people, either. Even your credit rating hovers brightly in the air above your head when you pass a Credit Pole on the street.
This is the USA Gary Shteyngart creates to showcase the truly sad love story of Lenny Abramov (Russian-American, age 39, depressive reader of books) and Eunice Park (Korean-American, age 24, anorexic, self-obsessed, and cruel shopaholic like all her friends). The tale of their troubled relationship plays out against the backdrop of a city (New York) and a country in the throes of total collapse. It's not a pretty picture -- but it's extremely funny.
Super Sad True Love Story is Shteyngart's third novel, and it's the best of the lot. It follows The Russian Debutante's Handbook and Absurdistan, both brilliantly satirical. All three are characterized by the author's masterful way with language and his delicious sense of humor.
(From Mal Warwick's Blog on Books)
Witty, shocking and funny- I'm just truly sad that this lovely story ended September 4, 2010
Masha279
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I started reading this book having never read anything else by this author and with no idea what this story was about. If anything, I was worried that it would be melodramatic from the sound of the title. By the time I finished the first page I realized that this novel is anything but a breezy, sappy story. The satire was almost biting at times, but this book managed to make me laugh and almost cry before I finished it. I highly recommend it to anyone who likes well written fiction with heaps of social commentary and a sardonic twist.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 59
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