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Aug 15, 2008

Jack rated it:

I finished this book only because I paid full price for it. It was not funny and the self-absorption of the main character, Misha, was tiresome to say the least. Repetitious sex, gluttonous eating and lame political satire do not make a funny book. I hated this book, and feel absurd for having read the entire thing. Maybe I missed the point, some political and cultural satire, but I cannot believe its cover blurbs that cite so many newspapers naming it among their top ten books of the year.

0 comments like (10 people liked it)

Dec 10, 2007

Ed rated it:

This struggles only in how it starts and how it ends. Now I don't need a bow, ribbon, road signs, and a pat on the head when I read, but he soapboxed his way through this allegory, and it needed something firmer coming out the other side. It blurs at the edges and you're left nowhere when you spent all this time grounded in a very specific, real "somewhere." If you put in all that effort to bring us with you, keeping us tightly wrapped in this "Iraq" stand-in, you can't just More...

4 comments like (7 people liked it)

Aug 23, 2007

Cam rated it:

This disaster of a book is as senselessly profane as it is painful to read. While surely some measure of artistry was necessary to have stretched such an uninspired satire into 333-pages of filth, only a true dullard would find occasion to be impressed.

Shteyngart's aptly titled story of Absurdistan is told from the perspective of a morbidly obese pig-man who possesses the intellect of a lobotomized chihuahua. This vacuous ogre of a protagonist, Misha Vainberg, dawdles away life b More...

1 comment like (6 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Jeffrey rated it:

Absurdistan is a few different novels at once. Along the way Gary Shteyngart uses sex, drugs, and violence to present constant dicotomies of pleasure and pain, and hope and despair. There are quite a few sex scenes that are kinky in a humorous and even strangely endearing way. And then there is sex that is the sort only offered or taken part in because of desperation and despair. These moments are nauseating. There is a very entertaining drug scene in which the protagonist, Vainberg, is ve More...

0 comments like (7 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Dave-O rated it:

"Absurdistan" is a very self-aware book. This hybrid of "A Confederacy of Dunces" and "Fight Club" the book is calculated and scathing in its language. With one swipe, Gary Shteyngart brings hipsters, academics, politicians, MBAs, history and consumerism to a palatable middle-brow level. Which is just where the 300 pound anti-hero Misha needs them to be.

At its best "Absurdistan" is clever to the nth degree. Misha sees the world as it is, stripp More...

0 comments like (9 people liked it)

Dec 06, 2007

Tommy rated it:

Fat Russian explores the Middle East a la Confederacy of Dunces, except not quite as charming and a bit more overbearing. Bits with Brooklyn fling quite comical; most other parts too heavy-handed to be laughable.

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Oct 25, 2007

Daniel rated it:

There's satire and then there's books in which everybody is horrible. "Absurdistan" is one of the latter, I think. It's about Misha, an emotionally crippled, morbidly obese Russian oligarch who wants only to move to New York to be with his girlfriend. He can't though, since his obese Russian oligarch father once killed an Oklahoma businessman and now the INS won't give Misha a visa. His quest for a US visa brings him from Russia to Absurdistan, the (made-up) pearl of the Caspian Sea More...

1 comment like (8 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

hanna rated it:

two probelms:
jerry shteynfarb and the russian arriviste's hand job? this is your second novel dude. you are way too young to get all vonnegut and come up with a kilgore trout alter ego, with a self-deprecatingly mocking title for a novel.

okay, so the entire book predates september 11, and deals with america muddling foreign affairs. but terrorism, not really. i'm not sure that it works, or makes sense, and almost seems like a cheap way to give the novel more weight. with t More...

1 comment like (4 people liked it)

Feb 16, 2011

Ryan rated it:

If you were ever wondering what the difference was between a novel that is well written and a novel that is fun to read, you could begin your study with Gary Shteyngart's Absurdistan.

(Or Heart of Darkness, for that matter.)

Don't get me wrong, I can see what The New York Times is gushing about. Unfortunately, seeing it and feeling it are two different things. Sadly, for me, it is very rarely when I am in the mood to read a satire that is as dedicated to its cleverness as A More...

4 comments like (4 people liked it)

Feb 10, 2008

Joe rated it:

Good political and social satire makes you look at the world a little differently, with some laughs along the way. This did not.

For the life of me, I can't figure out why this book got such critical acclaim. The humor was cheap and obvious (although sometimes actually funny) and I couldn't help feeling like Shteyngart robbed his main character from A Confederacy of Dunces, only without the keen ability to actually develop the character like Toole had (RIP).

The most More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 06, 2008

Mike rated it:

This was a really odd book. “Absurdistan” is about Misha Vainberg, a big, fat, spoiled Russian in his late 20s who is trapped in Russia. He’s stuck there with his girlfriend Rouenna, a largish black stripper from Harlem and his best friend Alyosha-Bob who isn’t Russian but kind of pretends to be. Misha yearns to go back to the US where he attended Accidental College and had himself a botched circumcision. He’s trapped in Russia because his father, who is now dead, killed an Oklahoman man More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Oct 23, 2007

Stuart rated it:

"At Accidental College, we were taught that our dreams and our beliefs were all that mattered, that the world would eventually sway to our will, fall in step with our goodness, swoon right into our delicate white arms. All those Introduction to Striptease classes (apparently each of our ridiculous bodies had been made perfect in its own way), all those Advanced Memoir seminars, all those symposiums on Overcoming Shyness and Facilitating Self-Expression. And it wasn't just Accidental College More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Daniel rated it:

Brief summary:

Vainberg, a rotund, melancholic Russian man, lives a life of misadventure. Haunted by his bygone days as an American college student, he frequently recalls attending "Accidental College" (aka Oberlin) where he studied Multiculturalism. The main character from "The Russian Debutante's Handbook" makes a cameo appearance, shared with the author himself - ("Shteynfarb"). But Vainberg wastes no love on either, for he is trapped in the former USS More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

M rated it:

This is laugh-out-loud hilarious, by which I mean that it literally caused me to guffaw audibly in public. Second novels are often disappointing, but this one was insightful, incisive, and timely.

Shteyngart skewers just about every ethnic group and political ideology in this whirlwind farce, and it's impossible to put down. A great airplane read, and the short chapters also make it suitable for a subway commute.

I will say this, though -- I love to read about food, and More...

0 comments like (6 people liked it)

Dec 06, 2008

Erin rated it:

An obese Russian gentleman with an unhealthy affection for the United States is not allowed to return to his beloved home in the Bronx because his mafioso father killed an Oklahoman so his son would not be allowed back into the US. There you have it. This book is marketed as a satire, and unfortunately, I was unable to make all the connections. The main character seems to represent the capitalism and overwhelming consumption food, sex, expensive hotels, and the capacity to purchase friends. More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Feb 24, 2009

Summer rated it:

I was given this as a gift by my brother's ex-girlfriend a year and a half ago. I think my guilt over not reading it before now made me persevere.

Somehow I finished the book, despite being equally repulsed and bored by it. I really did appreciate Shteyngart's use of language, which is why I have opted for two stars rather than one. I know that this is classified as a satire, but I felt that Shteyngart was making his characters such irritating cliches that I wanted to commit viol More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 03, 2011

Diana rated it:

Alright. People say this book is "Confederacy of Dunces" meets "Fight Club." There is definitely also the gentle poking-fun-of-foreigners'-English-for-humorous-effect of "Everything is Illuminated," and the over-the-top language of "Lolita," as well as the feel of Dr. Strangelove. Kind of a weird book.

To me, it progressed as follows:

Bizarre, and difficult to get into ->
Engaging and funny ->
Very weird (drug trip) ->
More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 14, 2008

Morgan rated it:

Really, it boils down to the fact that this was just a boring wank-a-thon. Boring. As shit. I can see how people would be impressed with this book though, since Shteyngart can emulate all of the writing styles of every single polular Russian writer of the past two centuries. Ok, dude, I get it, you can write like Tolstoy and Nabokov, I get it. However, if you're trying to impress me with that junk, it's a wasted gesture, since the people that get it are the same people who have already read Dost More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 12, 2008

Daniel rated it:

According to the New York Times, this is one of the ten best books of the year. What a sad year for literature was 2007!

I wanted very much to like this, and there were moments when I smiled at a phrase or passage or even a bit of biting satire, but over-all this was nothing more than literary masturbation ... an author trying to show off how clever he is rather than actually engaging a reader in a story. And, quite frankly, the story doesn't even begin until nearly a third of the w More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 20, 2008

Cyrus rated it:

I thoroughly enjoyed this tongue-in-cheek, satirical coming of age tale, though it was good for different reasons than I had expected. The political satire in the book deals with the nature of geopolitics in the age of oil addiction, terrorism and a vacuum in the sort of global stability that existed in the stalemate of the cold war. I was expecting this book to be a send up of the logic of nation building, war for oil and the related issues that are so deadly important in the world no More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Apr 22, 2007

Chris rated it:

The review in the Times and the interviews I heard on NPR made me want to rush out and buy the hard-cover, but I waited, and now the paper-back is out.

Good thing I waited, as I had to force myself to finish the first four chapters. I like to give a book a chance, give it 50 pages or so before I give up on it, but honestly I started skimming around page 35 or so. The tone is so forced, so self-consciously modern and hip, the narrator so annoying, that I had to check the cover to m More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Oct 23, 2011

Eveline rated it:

i loved "the russian debutante's handbook" because it was really clever but in what felt like an effortless way. i didn't like this much because it was also definitely super clever, but in a way that to me exerted a lot of effort. too contrived i guess.

howevs, like the other book, this book had some lines that were so great that i had to transcribe them:

Who cared about literature, anyway? Petroleum and hip-hop were the topics of my generation.

She looked u More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Logan rated it:

I enjoyed this book quite a bit. Sure, not to the extent that I enjoyed "The Russian Debutante's Handbook," but that is to be expected (even authors can tend to suffer from the dreaded Sophomore Slump). That said, it is easy to understand how Aburdistan ended up on so many respectable book critics top ten of 2006 lists. It is biting satire, and by biting I mean teeth wrapped around your jugular satire. It's at times sweet, sentimental, hilarious, repulsive, and obnoxious. The main More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 01, 2011

Thara rated it:

Misha, the main character, is a Russian and watered-down version of Ignatius J. Reilly from A Confederacy of Dunces. Read that instead: it's one of the funniest & most brilliant books you will ever read. Absurdistan, on the other hand, is entertaining, but not a laugh riot.

Shteyngart teeters the line between vulgar and funny, often landing on the more-vulgar-than-funny side. I also have beef with the author's self-satire, which comes in the form of an often referenced nemesis in More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 05, 2009

Troy rated it:

A very funny farce about contemporary Russia and the United States. A hilarious send up of Halliburton and consumer culture.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 29, 2008

Andreas rated it:

I never actually finished it. I tried, really! Everyone was telling me how funny and great it is, so I made a concerted effort to read it. Alas, I couldn't do it. Finally someone I knew really wanted to give it a try and I relented. I gave it to them and I'm sure they are loving it.

I did think it was getting better right about the point I gave up but up until then I found the narrative too disjointed and the humor kind of mediocre. Its a shame too, because normally books about humong

More...

4 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 17, 2008

Ian rated it:

Read this one on the strength of several great reviews...and learned never to read a book simply on the strength of several great reviews. Not poorly written, but the author's attempts at self-deprecating humor came across as more self-indulgent than anything else. The main character (an obvious riff on Ignatius Reilly) never gained my sympathy as a reader despite Shteyngart's best intentions. Overall, it simply didn't sit well with me and stopped being fun to read after the first 100 pages o More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 10, 2011

Becky added it

Misha Vainberg, a 325 pound Russian Jew, is the son of the 1,238th richest man in Russia. Sent in 1990 by his Beloved Papa to get his education at the American Accidental College ("located deep in the country's interior and safe from the gay distractions of the eastern and western seaboards"), Misha majored in multicultural studies, ate Doritos and Oreos and Cheetos and pizza, smoked dope, learned to rap ("My name is Vainberg/I like ho's/Sniff 'em out/Wid my Hebrew nose"), an More...

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Feb 26, 2009

Brett rated it:

This book tells the story of Misha, the fat, rap music-loving son of the 1,238th richest man in Russia, and his attempt to leave Russia and return to the United States. Misha grew up in Russia, went to college in the US, and then returned to Russia. Upon Misha's return his father killed an Oklahoman and the US banned everyone in their family from returning to the US.
The characters are well-defined, and likable when they're supposed to be, and horrible when they're supposed to be. The au More...

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Feb 17, 2009

Reid rated it:

This novel very clearly fits into the school of New American Fiction, along with Kavalier & Clay, Middlesex, and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, immigrant's tales focusing on adolescence and young adulthood. Perhaps this mimics the trend of our national history, as we begin to mature and again must search for our role in a world that finds us rich, pampered and severely underqualified for any productive sort of existence. The protagonist, Misha Vainberg (what's in a name?), embodies thes More...

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