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Super Sad True Love Story

3.43 of 5 stars 3.43 · rating details · 18,745 ratings · 3,158 reviews

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 nea...more 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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Hardcover, 352 pages

Published July 27th 2010 by Random House Publishing Group (first published 2010)

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Aug 01, 2011 K.D. Oliveros rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to K.D. by: 10 Best Novels of 2010

Shelves: dystopian, tragicomic, ya, love-story, saddest

My current best friend in the office is a half-Chinese lady. She, just like most Chinese in the Philippines, is proud of her Chinese blood. I cannot blame her. Chinese businessmen rule the economy of the country. Even the sitting president has Chinese blood in his veins. In short, pure Filipinos accept the fact that having to exist, or even to work for, with their fellow Filipinos with Chinese blood is a non-issue. In most cases, those Chinese-Filipinos are even better in mathematics and in runn...more My current best friend in the office is a half-Chinese lady. She, just like most Chinese in the Philippines, is proud of her Chinese blood. I cannot blame her. Chinese businessmen rule the economy of the country. Even the sitting president has Chinese blood in his veins. In short, pure Filipinos accept the fact that having to exist, or even to work for, with their fellow Filipinos with Chinese blood is a non-issue. In most cases, those Chinese-Filipinos are even better in mathematics and in running businesses. Filipinos have long history of friendship with America since Philippines were under American occupation for 30 years. 8 in every 10 Filipinos have some relatives or friends in the USA. Some economists say that China is the next USA maybe in the next 3 or more decades. For this to happen, the economy of the USA will continue its downfall and China will continue its gain. I have my mother and brother and his family in California. The company I currently work with has its home office in Ohio. Of course, I would like the US economy to recover. I am not an economist so I cannot tell whether the shift, if and when it happens, will be better for the Philippines overall. China is closer in terms of distance and in a way even looks, e.g., chinky eyes. Many Filipinos have found employment there like entertainers, English teachers, managers, software engineers or construction workers.

This book reminded me of that prediction. In this tragicomic dystopian novel Super Sad True Love Story, 39-y/o Russian-American Lenny Abramov falls in love with 24-y/o Korean-American Eunice Park. Lenny is poor while Eunice is rich. It's kind of a reversal of fortune as Shteyngart depicts this interesting situation in more ways than one, i.e., that without no money, in the book. Aside from that reversal, the novel also uses a lot of contrasts between the two: male vs female, old vs young, poor vs rich, literary addict vs non-reader, good old book vs e-book, long-term vs non-commitment, love vs lust, etc. Very unlikely pair giving a breath of fresh air to all the recent love stories that I've read.

Needless to say, that reversal of fortune is not the main reason why I found this book amazing. It is the first time I found a dystopian book superfunny (especially in its first half) yet supersad (towards the end). Shteyngart used two alternating narrators and forms: Lenny writing to his diary and Eunice in epistolary form communicating via Facebook-like site called GlobalTeens. The setting is suppose to be in the near-future and, because it is well-written, has been compared to other dystopian sci-fi literary gems. But unlike George Orwell's 1984, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, this book Super Sad True Love Story has no communist-scare undertone which is now passe. In fact, this, because of the predicted shift of power, is very current and rather than a sci-fi, can be more appropriately called as speculative fiction.

One very interesting gadget widely used in this novel that it is almost like a character in itself is called apparat (each of the letter a's has two dots on top of them but I still have to figure out how to put them here in Goodreads). It is like a mobile that is normally worn by attaching it to a necklace like a pendant. If it is turned on, it is connected to your database where everything can be accessed automatically by anybody near you. It has all your data including who you have slept or sleeping with, your history of purchases, lifestyle and it has even ratings for you fuckability, hotness, financial status, etc. Then the said machine can also automatically compute those information for all the people in a given location, e.g., people in the bar you are in, and rank those people accordingly, e.g., Top 10 Hot Males or Top 10 Fuckable Ladies. That's the part I laughed out loud several times not because I felt sorry for the 39-y/o poor Lenny for his low scores but because of the way Gary Shteyngart (born 1972) used him and Eunice to be the very unusual inter-racial bed partners and later lovers that I encountered in all my readings so far.

This is truly an unforgettable read. Well done, Shteyngart. (less)

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May 14, 2010 David rated it 2 of 5 stars

Gary Shteyngart has failed me. True, he probably wasn't aware that he had a responsibility to me, personally, but (in most cultures) ignorance of the law is seldom sufficient cause to dismiss the crime.

Shteyngart's crime is that he has written what appears to be an awful book. (I say 'what appears to be' because I didn't have the heart to finish it.*) Yes, as you well know, countless other writers have committed the same crime -- some even more gruesomely -- but most of these capital offenses w...more Gary Shteyngart has failed me. True, he probably wasn't aware that he had a responsibility to me, personally, but (in most cultures) ignorance of the law is seldom sufficient cause to dismiss the crime.

Shteyngart's crime is that he has written what appears to be an awful book. (I say 'what appears to be' because I didn't have the heart to finish it.*) Yes, as you well know, countless other writers have committed the same crime -- some even more gruesomely -- but most of these capital offenses weren't preceded by a debut novel of great promise (The Russian Debutante's Handbook: very amusing at times and suggestive of a kernel of greatness) and a sophomore novel named among the best books of the year by The New York Times Book Review (Absurdistan: a technically improved four-star novel).

Super Sad True Love Story began with two or three pages of hyperneurotic and death-obsessed musings that gave me a literary boner. TMI maybe, but my aesthetic compass was pointing due north from the get-go. I thought to myself right then, 'This is going to be a truly Great Book.' Well, go ahead and file away that declaration with the marketing plan of Edsel, the proliferation of Esperanto, the acceptance of the metric system in America, the electoral revolution of Ross Perot, the circulation of the Susan B. Anthony dollar, and the bankrolling of Cimino's Heaven's Gate.

What followed the initial excitement was a profound disappointment at this obvious, uninsightful, and -- worst of all -- unfunny satire. Shteyngart clearly used George W. Bush-era America as a jumping off point to imagine a vague dystopia** in which the U.S. seems to be transitioning to a fully fascist state dominated by elaborate systems of monitoring and surveillance and an unwieldy Kafkaesque bureaucracy (yes, Kafkaesque -- it's always super-duper Kafkaesque in the future, ain't it?). On top of this bleak political outlook, Shteyngart feeds off the Great Recession by going out on a limb and predicting the inevitable: that the U.S. will eventually be eclipsed economically by Asian countries, China in particular, of course. (I don't think there are many people who seriously doubt this, are there? It's only a matter of how long it will take that keeps people disagreeing.) And connecting all of the dots, Shteyngart attempts to lampoon the hyperactivity of internet culture as well -- serving up a Facebook parody that is so enragingly tepid that it conjures up images of an ill-starred archer who is surrounded by nothing but targets but somehow manages to miss the mark. By never even releasing the bow.

Shteyngart supplies his dystopia with precious, infuriatingly 'cute' alternate-world details: for instance, Manhattan has become the socioeconomic Siberia of New York City, while Staten Island is the hip, newly-gentrified borough. (Isn't that funny? Uh, not really. It's the kind of humor that's so obvious that it doesn't even need to be written down.) Meanwhile, St. Petersburg (Russia) (nee Leningrad, nee St. Petersburg) is now... you got it... Putingrad. Please gather your sides before they split.

Within this milieu, Shteyngart situates a love story between a middle-aged, ugly, loser schlub and a young Asian-American girl. As far as I read into the book, this romance did little to humanize the strangely abstract, undeveloped, and unreal surroundings in which they found themselves.

* Of course, it's possible that the latter section of the novel redeems the earlier section, but I'm skeptical. The equations that we readers regularly calculate (as to a novel's readability, enjoyment factor, intellectual gratification, and so on) produced only the reminder that life was too short (or this book too long, depending upon your perspective) to bother with it.

** I refer to Shteyngart's dystopia as 'vague' because it feels sketchy and not-well-thought-out. You (meaning I) never really buy it as a coherent reality within the parameters of the novel. It's seems more like a provisional world existing only to nudge characters into action and thought and threatening to evaporate any moment into insubstantiality.(less)

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Jul 08, 2011 Sandy Tjan rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2010, contemporary-fiction, ebook

BookFiendUSA: I see that you’ve been reading Super Sad True Love Story. Cute title, big hype. What’s it about?

SandyBanks1971: It’s about this guy, Lenny Abramov, second-generation Russian Jewish-American, who is in his “very late thirties” and very bothered about it. He thinks that’s he’s a RAG who can’t get the girl anymore, and a failure in his job to get HNWIs to buy his company’s “life extension” programs.

BookFiendUSA: I know that HNWI is High Net Worth Individual --- but what the hell is a...more

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Dec 10, 2010 Ryan rated it 4 of 5 stars

I don't think I've ever been so happy to finish a book.

It's not that Super Sad True Love Story is a bad or boring book. It's quite intelligent and it's often funny (perhaps 'witty' would be a better adjective for a New York Times darling like Shteyngart). However, this book is just super sad. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the working title was "super, super, sad story."

Shteyngart has created a "dystopian" America, but readers won't have to try very hard to find the targets of this satire....more I don't think I've ever been so happy to finish a book.

It's not that Super Sad True Love Story is a bad or boring book. It's quite intelligent and it's often funny (perhaps 'witty' would be a better adjective for a New York Times darling like Shteyngart). However, this book is just super sad. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the working title was "super, super, sad story."

Shteyngart has created a "dystopian" America, but readers won't have to try very hard to find the targets of this satire. Social networking is out of control and people spend all their time texting, chatting, and online shopping. Most people are illiterate, and the only library we see is actually sprayed with pinesol to get rid of the smell.

Thankfully, smart phones are better than ever at collecting and broadcasting personal data. Now, they can even be used to rate the attractiveness and personality of the people around you. They monitor your pulse and social networking history to produce their ratings.

Unfortunately, Lenny Abramov always scores low in attractiveness and personality, though his credit is impressive.

Nearly 40, Lenny is a salesman for a longevity company that markets its program to healthy, high net worth individuals (HNWIs). Yes, Lenny has good credit, but it's becoming increasingly unlikely that he will live forever. Sadly, his Ohio-shaped bald spot is only getting bigger.

However, when Lenny meets a 24 year-old Korean girl, Eunice Park, while in Rome, he finds a new lease on life. Eunice is young, beautiful, and she comes from an abusive family. Lenny doesn't need his smart phone to tell him that Eunice is just the type of girl to receive his unconditional love.

Unfortunately, Eunice is not a very warm person and although she admits to herself and her friends that she loves Lenny, she is living in a difficult world. America is now well beyond "decline." Its economy in shambles and its debt out of control, the country only survives by the grace of the Chinese and their credit. Lenny's strategies to succeed in this economy? Associate with an attractive Korean girl and make your boss feel protective about you.

In the New York that Shteyngart describes, there is no longer room for any class but the ultra rich. And there may not be room for a love story either, no matter how super sad it may be.

Super Sad True Love Story does contain moments of humor, but it's quite a downer. Considering that all of the people in this story are ridiculed for their obsessions with cheating death and positive thinking, I couldn't help feeling guilty by how squeamish I felt while reading this novel.

But I must admit that it succeeded in making me feel super sad.(less)

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Jul 22, 2011 James rated it 1 of 5 stars

My favorite quote was "In short I felt paternal and aroused, which is not a good combination."
I wish I could meet Gary Shteyngart just to tell him to stay the fuck away from my daughter.

Short version: it's unrelatable. Don't read it.

I found this book through a blog post where the author used quotes from SSTLS to describe how he felt he was less and less creative every year since graduating college, a feeling with which I could sympathize, but the main character and story are unrelatable. There a...more

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Sep 17, 2012 Laura Leaney rated it 4 of 5 stars

Recommended to Laura by: John Arfwedson

This book is a somewhat frightening vision of future America – one controlled by the police, owned by China (everything is “yuan-pegged”), manipulated by corporate retail, and slavishly beholden to youth culture. The protagonist, Lenny Abramov, a reader of actual paper books (smelly!) vacillates between the sharp fearsome knowledge that he’s becoming old and unnecessary and cynical self-awareness that he’s still superior to the vast majority of idiots who are part of the hip crowd. Regardless, h...more This book is a somewhat frightening vision of future America – one controlled by the police, owned by China (everything is “yuan-pegged”), manipulated by corporate retail, and slavishly beholden to youth culture. The protagonist, Lenny Abramov, a reader of actual paper books (smelly!) vacillates between the sharp fearsome knowledge that he’s becoming old and unnecessary and cynical self-awareness that he’s still superior to the vast majority of idiots who are part of the hip crowd. Regardless, he's one of the good guys: kind, anxious, and painfully human.

When Lenny gets back to work after sojourning in Europe, he’s told he doesn’t have a desk anymore:

“What should I do?" I whispered.
“It would help,” she said, “if you looked a little younger. Take care of yourself. Go to the Eternity Lounge. Put some Lexin-DC concentrate under your eyes.”
The Eternity Lounge was crammed full of smelly young people checking their äppäräti or leaning back on couches with their faces up to the ceiling, de-stressing, breathing right. The even, nutty aroma of brewing green tea snuck a morsel of nostalgia into my general climate of fear.”

Even though I found reading the acronyms of the new culture somewhat tiresome, they contributed to the satire on American values. HNWIs are “high net worth individuals” and JBF means “just butt fucking” with you. The acronyms are horribly close to the smallness of writing for the internet/Twitter/Facebook world happening right now in present time. Lenny, balding, soft, 39 years old, tries hard to stay with it. His love interest, a svelte Korean girl fifteen years his junior, remakes him enough to save his position as a Post-Human Services salesman for the Staatling-Wapachung Corporation. Shteyngardt completely captures the great chasm between them through the language they use. Lenny’s point of view is given to us through his “Dear Diary” entries, and his girlfriend, Eunice Park, is mostly portrayed through her Globalteens account, which includes letters to her friend who is alternately known as “Precious Pony” and”Grillbitch,” her mother, a Korean immigrant who is beaten and abused by her husband, and her sister Sally. Here is Eunice to Grillbitch: “Sup, slut? I really wish you were here right now. I need someone to verbal with and Teens just ain’t cutting it.” In between discussions on shopping at Assluxury and JuicyPussy, the emptiness of a world based on consumption and appearance is revealed anew. “Looking good is the new smart.”

I admire the way the author handled the confusion of the America’s political situation. No one seems to know what’s going on. China appears to be pulling the strings, but the ostensible government is busy waging war on Venezuala as well as American citizens. At the beginning of the novel, Lenny’s plane is surrounded by police; when they’re asked to wait under a “security shed,” a tank rolls over to them and all the passengers raise their hands. A soldier emerges from the tank and plants a highway sign next to the tank that reads:

IT IS FORBIDDEN TO ACKNOWLEDGE THE EXISTENCE OF THIS VEHICLE (“THE OBJECT”) UNTIL YOU ARE .5 MILES FROM THE SECURITY PERIMETER OF JOHN F. KENNEDY INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT. BY READING THIS SIGN YOU HAVE DENIED EXISTENCE OF THE OBJECT AND IMPLIED CONSENT.

That might the keenest criticism of governmental doings I’ve read in ages.
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Feb 23, 2011 Laura rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: people who think "social web" is making us all dumber

Recommended to Laura by: The Google

I'm distressed to even be writing a review on one of the many social networking sites that consume us now given the bleak future such activity is leading us towards. If you ask people to friend you or if you use text as a verb, you should skip this book. If you ponder which designer to wear or carry will make the best impression to others, skip this book. If you find "joy" in "communicating" via something you typed by thumb or via some shallow site like Facebook, then there probably just isn't a...more

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Jun 28, 2012 Monica rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011, genrex

I want to talk about this with people. And not on Facebook, because now that seems completely counterproductive.

I never ever want to live in this world. Or know any of these people. Fast read and entertaining, once I got through the structure and world creation. Dystopia has a tendency to edge into silly for me, but I really had a good time with this. 3.5 stars.

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Sep 23, 2010 Dana rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is speculative fiction that is completely on target when it comes to current feelings about the Internet, economics, politics AND youth culture. It’s like Shteyngart took Jaron Lanier’s “You Are Not a Gadget,” all your worst nightmares about the Tea Party, your yuppie friends who keep their faces buried in their iPhones at the bar, your recent revelation that Facebooking is the loneliest part of your day, and your strict immigrant parents, and wrote a love story.

The part that tickles me th...more

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Jan 05, 2011 Kemper rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011, modern-lit, sci-fi, dystopia

Oh, did I read this book at the exact wrong time of my life.

It's about a thirty-nine year old guy who is quickly losing what small traces of cool he ever had to middle-age as he is relentlessly mocked by a youth culture that finds him old, disgusting and out of touch.

I’m forty, very nearly forty-one. I don‘t like Twitter. I don’t know who half the celebrities referenced in the news are any more. (What the hell is a Snooki??) I got a painful case of bursitis seconds after turning forty that last...more Oh, did I read this book at the exact wrong time of my life.

It's about a thirty-nine year old guy who is quickly losing what small traces of cool he ever had to middle-age as he is relentlessly mocked by a youth culture that finds him old, disgusting and out of touch.

I’m forty, very nearly forty-one. I don‘t like Twitter. I don’t know who half the celebrities referenced in the news are any more. (What the hell is a Snooki??) I got a painful case of bursitis seconds after turning forty that lasted most of the year. And at Christmas, my twelve year old niece was teaching me how to play Farkle. (With real dice and a pen & paper. Like in olden times!) While she was effortlessly playing, talking to me, holding two other conversations, keeping score and texting every fifteen seconds, I could barely add up my own rolls and had to refocus every time someone said something to me. An hour of that, and I felt like I should just wander outside and lay down in the snow to die so I wouldn’t take up precious resources that she’ll need.

So I had to grit my teeth a lot while reading.

It’s set in the near future where the current internetization of our personal lives has been turned up to 11. Everyone uses a device called an apparat (the ultimate smart phone) to broadcast all their personal info, and everyone is constantly rating everyone else on everything from personality to sex appeal. There's no concept of personal privacy when your credit rating and your sexual history (which most people film) is available to everyone. In a society where image is everything, aging or being unattractive are considered sins.

Unfortunately, for Lenny Abramov, he’s thirty-nine, ugly, depressive and so terrified of death that he’s been saving constantly for expensive anti-aging treatments from the company he works for. Just before returning from an extended work trip in Italy, he meets the much younger and very pretty Eunice Park, a Korean-American with a lot of issues with her parents.

Lenny falls hard for Eunice and talks her into coming to see him in New York. Despite Lenny being a dork who still reads smelly old paper books and Eunice being a trendy shopaholic with low self-esteem, the two find a connection and begin a relationship. But around them the American economy based on spending is circling the drain and political tensions are running high as the entire country seems on the verge of collapse even as everyone still tries to look good and keep their personal ratings up.

I really liked this premise of a technologically based youth culture run amok as the entire house of cards is about to collapse, and I found the romance between Lenny and Eunice to be (as advertised) a super sad true love story.

But in addition to reminding me constantly of how old and out of touch I am, Shteyngart, pulls a good trick here that makes me feel like an asshole just for typing this. Because how do you rate a book on the internet when that book mocks a culture that feels the need to obsessively rate everything via digital devices?

To hell with it. Three stars. It should probably be a four star read, but I’m deducting a star for screwing with my head and bumming me out.(less)

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Aug 02, 2011 Bill Dauster rated it 4 of 5 stars

“Super Sad True Love Story” is a clever, trenchant satire of our near future, poking fun at homeland security, social network communication, corporate culture, the degradation of language, youth obsession, first-generation-immigrant sensibilities, delusions of inferiority, religious observance, the coarsening of fashion, fiscal irresponsibility, privatization of state functions, bipartisanship, our portable computers, and senseless infatuation. None comes out unassailed. Shteyngart does it all w...more

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Dec 28, 2011 Marieke rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011, audiobooks, fiction, w11, bookish, dystopia

i think if i had read the actual book, i would give it three stars--a strong three stars. but i listened to the audio version, which was a heck of a lot of fun. the two narrators were awesome. that's all i'm going to say about it. oh, actually, that's not true. i want to say one thing about it. it was really funny to listen to it right now, rather than last year when it was published--because of our government's budget crisis and impending debt ceiling debacle. if anything, Shteyngart has prepar...more

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Apr 15, 2012 Glee rated it 1 of 5 stars

Cannot finish. Super gross whiny execution of pretty good idea (observations of a society obsessed with illiterate twenty-somethings who can't put down their smart-phonish "apparats" long enough to make eye contact). Gross middle-aged guy pursuing 86 pound teenager and seems only to engage in oral sex with the kind of detail I can live without. At least for the first 100 pages or so. I quit. One of those truly weird experiences...every paragraph, every page so blisteringly achingly funny and obs...more

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Apr 14, 2011 E rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: novels

Gary Shteyngart has staked out a spot for himself on my shelf next to David Sedaris, Sandra Cisneros, Harryette Mullen, the Xenophobe's Guides, Nutella, balsamic vinegar chips, and all my other comfort foods. His books are oddly-shaped jars of stuff I KNOW is alway going to be good in that loving, familiar way sung about in the opening credits of "Cheers." Just a few pages into his latest novel, I knew who Lenny was, and I swear he winked at me. I didn't like Eunice, but I had to admit I underst...more

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Nov 07, 2011 Elizabeth rated it 2 of 5 stars Recommends it for: los angeles media whores

Shelves: 2011

This book started out with a bang, quick-witted, fast-paced writing involving a futuristic America whose scenarios are not a lot different than some of the possible scenarios I picture in my head for our future. America's bankrupt with checkpoints at every block and given in to all encompassing youth and retail without an iota of pretense, where you walk by poles that announce your credit rating, where girls wear onion skin jeans and where we all have apparat's, ipad like devices, that constantl...more

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Feb 21, 2011 Bart Thanhauser rated it 4 of 5 stars

I generally don’t like science fiction. I don’t much like explicit political commentary in novels either. And when the two are mixed—loud political commentary communicated via a dystopian future-world, it comes across as hyperbolic and adolescent.

So, it’s with surprise that I write that that this is a pretty good futuristic novel chalked with smart political commentary. The Israel Security State. The American Restoration Association. Fuckabilty Ratings. This is some witty-ass, clever writing.

Th...more

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Aug 11, 2011 Haley rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shteyngart's bizarro-world version of the not-so-distant future of America is tough to swallow--sometimes because it's just too obscene and outlandish to be true, and other times because certain aspects are so painfully familiar. There are lots of difficult messages about the state of our country this book is trying to send, but for me it was ultimately about complacency and fear; all the times we look away from injustice just to give ourselves a little peace of mind; all the ethical and moral c...more

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Oct 19, 2010 Doug rated it 3 of 5 stars

Super Sad True Love Story reminded me in bits and pieces of several other near future satire/dystopias (all of which I thought were more successful), among them Wallace's Infinite Jest and Hal Hartley's film The Girl from Monday, but most of all David Marusek's Counting Heads. Marusek's book is much more science fiction-y and action-oriented, but the two novels share a self-consciously anachronistic narrative viewpoint and a mix of realistic socio-technical extrapolation and credulity-straining...more

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Jan 05, 2011 Mark rated it 5 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Jan 02, 2011 Casey rated it 1 of 5 stars

UPDATE: 1/2/11 - Random troll reminded me I had never done a full review of this book.

I had so many problems with this book I have trouble narrowing it down into something concise. The main character, Lenny Abraham, is just awful. Kind of sort of so is Gary Shteyngart. (Surprise! They're both children of Russian immigrants and I'd bet money that Gary lives in Manhattan. And by the end of the novel, both are published authors!) The book presents an America of the not-too-distant-future via what...more UPDATE: 1/2/11 - Random troll reminded me I had never done a full review of this book.

I had so many problems with this book I have trouble narrowing it down into something concise. The main character, Lenny Abraham, is just awful. Kind of sort of so is Gary Shteyngart. (Surprise! They're both children of Russian immigrants and I'd bet money that Gary lives in Manhattan. And by the end of the novel, both are published authors!) The book presents an America of the not-too-distant-future via what Shteyngart must think is oh so clever satire - women wear OnionSkin jeans (sheer pants worn without underwear) and shop at AssLuxury and JuicyPussy; no one reads actual books because they "smell." Everyone carries around tiny mobile devices called Apparats (there are some umlauts in there but I just don't give a fuck), which broadcast all your most intimate details while also acting as your blackberry/videophone/deusexmachina. As a sci-fi fan, the thing that bothered me most about Apparats was a complete lack of explanation as to how they worked. They're described as being the size of a necklace pendant. How is anyone reading off of that?

And maybe due to my wrong approach or wrong focus, I just didn't "get" it. But what is there to get? Shteyngart mocks Fox News and corporate oligarchy. Every time young Eunice Park emails her Korean mother, Mrs. Park responds in such a poorly-worded manner, I felt racist just reading it (seriously Gary, the woman's lived in America for 20 years. There is no reason for every email of hers to read like a shitty 80's comedian bit - YOU BIN HEAH FOW OWAS!) Every time Lenny points out a misspelled sign to his dear readers, it's one that's been written by a group that is surely ESL. The book is broken up between 2 points of view - Lenny's journal entries and Eunice's emails/chats. Eunice is shallow and manipulative and supremely fucked up in regards to relationships, and if the entire book were from her perspective, I still would've had an awful time getting through it. But Lenny was just so repulsive, I found myself anticipating her chapters as a breath of fresh air.

But I digress. In short: awful book I only finished because I paid for it. I've read a lot of books, and I've read a lot of ACTUAL super sad true love stories. This was just super, sad, and stupid.

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According to my Kindle, I'm 20% into this book. With every page turn, I keep summoning my inner Dworkin and repeating, mantra-like, "This book was definitely written by a white male."(less)

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Mar 12, 2012 Melissa rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites

This was one of the greatest novels I've read in some time.

Shteyngart is so clever and creative and, as Eunice in this book would say, "brain smart," that he actually makes me realize I'm probably not cut out to be a writer myself. The book is a painfully believable vision of the not-too-distant future. Every parody of modern life is spot on -- the disintegrated language, the vapid culture, the obsession with wealth and longevity, America's crumbling economy and world standing caused by ongoing...more

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Jul 01, 2012 Adrianne Mathiowetz rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: actually-i-didn-t-finish-this

For the record, I made it to page 116.

Shteyngart put a lot of effort into being funny, here, and sometimes it's almost painful, like being in an audience of 3 at an open mic stand-up attempt. You want to laugh because clearly he wants you to laugh, but -- guys, this book is mad depressing. And I'm guessing that's part of the point -- that he's inventing this future dystopia that, surprise, is nearly exactly our current dystopia OH SHIT, but unlike most dystopian novels that get the youth riled u...more

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Dec 02, 2012 Julie rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011, author_male, book-club_normal, humor, love_story, pub_post-1945, scifi, type_fiction, books_abt_books

What happens when an incredibly gifted writer takes a deep character study, throws in a cutting critique of society, and infuses the whole thing with hilarious depictions of what technology may do to us if we aren't careful? You get that rarest of creations: the literary scifi novel. There are no weird aliens, no superheroes and no magic wands in Super Sad True Love Story. Instead, Shteyngart brings us Manhattan in the very near future, where your credit rating is your calling card, the poor hav...more

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Jan 02, 2012 Caitlin rated it 2 of 5 stars

I actually quite liked this, it was the ending that brought it round for me. The story starts out in a imagined American wasteland, with people absorbed in an even more addictive version of Facebook, sharing everything about themselves down to nutritional intake and credit information. Major corporations have absorbed each other, creating huge conglomerates that operate everything. However, a major disappointment for me was in the way Shteyngart relays the political turmoil - I never felt like i...more

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Apr 19, 2011 Michael rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: dystopia, humour, favourites, 2010, romance, literary-fiction, meta, satire

Super Sad True Love Story is a novel set in a very near future—oh, let’s say next Tuesday—where the world is dominated by Media and Retail. The story is centred on a thirty nine year Russian immigrant, Lenny, and what could likely be the world’s last diary. As well as the object of his affection; Eunice, who has her side of the story to by a collection of e-mail correspondences on her "GlobalTeens" account.

While this may be a story of a modern relationship; there is so much more in the novel wor...more

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Aug 07, 2010 Cameron rated it 4 of 5 stars

“Only spoiled white people could let something so good get so bad,” a character Verbals in Gary Shteyngart’s dystopian novel, SUPER SAD TRUE LOVE STORY. The book’s about the America we’re creating with News Corp, Halliburton, shallow online media, and exploding debt. It’s an America where youth is coddled and worshiped—a post-literate age where students major in Images and Assertiveness; where American Idol has morphed into (the perhaps more American) American Spender; where a private militia ru...more

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Oct 26, 2011 William Herschel rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: bookclub, 2011, romance

I was all wrong about this book. The thought of satire makes me feel like I'm left in an empty room all alone with the sound of receding laughter. Do you understand? But after awhile of actually reading it, I realized this isn't like that. The characters and events in the book are scarily relatable and the book was very much enhanced by group discussion.

I am very curious about how authors are tackling the internet in their work. I think Super Sad True Love Story did a good job of having just eno...more

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Dec 28, 2012 Daniel Etherington rated it 3 of 5 stars

I dunno, I felt I should have engaged better with this book, it should have been right up my street. I very much enjoy dystopian fiction, and Shteyngart does some impressive conjecturing about how society, technology and global politics could evolve, or are indeed evolving.

But I found myself not just warming to it, not warming to the main character, who came across as pretty unsympathetic, a bit of a selfish arse. Sure, a protagonist doesn't *have* to be sympathetic, but I suspect he was concei...more

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Mar 27, 2012 Joi podgorny rated it 3 of 5 stars

omg, pretentious much? I will finish, but seriously, dude - pining over media habits of yore and damning those in the future just makes the fear of aging plot-line in the book seem more salient and pathetic. Sure the dystopia you paint could come true. But a new era could also come from it. I hope this book redeems itself in the end, but I am not holding my breath. So far it's just a more creative way of whining about your fear of progress.
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Finished and still agree, but the plot and message...more

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Aug 22, 2010 Bookmarks Magazine rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: sept-oct-2010

If we are indeed as oversexed, consumer-obsessed, gadget-distracted and dangerously superficial as Gary Shteyngart paints us in his exuberant and devastating new novel...--and let's face it, we are--will such an acidly funny, prescient book be wasted on us? ponders the San Francisco Chronicle. If the critics' reactions are any indication, the answer is a resounding no. Juxtaposing Lenny's brooding diary entries with Eunice's self-absorbed text messages, Shteyngart crafts a chilling yet disturbin...more

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About Gary Shteyngart

Gary Shteyngart is an American writer born in Leningrad, USSR (he alternately calls it "St. Leningrad" or "St. Leninsburg"). Much of his work is satirical and relies on the invention of elaborately fictitious yet somehow familiar places and times.

His first novel, The Russian Debutante's Handbook (2002), received the Stephen Crane Award for First Fiction and the National Jewish Book Award.

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“Remember this... develop a sense of nostalgia for something, or you'll never figure out what's important.” — 44 people liked it

“Do not throw away your heart. Keep your heart. Your heart is all that matters ... Throw away your ancestors! ... Throw away your shyness and the anger that lies just a few inches beneath ... Accept the truth! And if there is more than one truth, then learn to do the difficult work -- learn to choose. You are good enough, you are HUMAN ENOUGH, to choose!” — 30 people liked it

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