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Our Country Friends
Eight friends, one country house, four romances, and six months in isolation -- a powerful, emotionally rich novel about love, friendship, and betrayal, a book that reads like a great Russian novel, or Chekhov on the Hudson, by a novelist The New York Times calls "one of his generation's most original and exhilarating writers".
It's March 2020 and a calamity is unfolding. A group of friends and friends-of-friends gathers in a country house to wait out the pandemic. Over the next six months new friendships and romances will take hold, while old betrayals will emerge, forcing each character to reevaulate whom they love and what matters most. The unlikely cast of characters include: a Russian-born novelist; his Russian-born psychiatrist wife; their precocious child obsessed with K-pop; a struggling Indian American writer; a wildly successful Korean American app developer; a global dandy with three passports; a young flame-thrower of an essayist, originally from the Carolinas; and a movie star, The Actor, whose arrival upsets the equilibrium of this chosen family.
In a remarkable literary feat, Gary Shteyngart has documented through fiction the emotional toll of our recent times: a story of love and friendship that reads like a great Russian novel set in upstate New York. Both elegiac and very, very funny, Our Country Friends is the most ambitious book yet by the author of the beloved bestseller, Super Sad True Love Story.
It's March 2020 and a calamity is unfolding. A group of friends and friends-of-friends gathers in a country house to wait out the pandemic. Over the next six months new friendships and romances will take hold, while old betrayals will emerge, forcing each character to reevaulate whom they love and what matters most. The unlikely cast of characters include: a Russian-born novelist; his Russian-born psychiatrist wife; their precocious child obsessed with K-pop; a struggling Indian American writer; a wildly successful Korean American app developer; a global dandy with three passports; a young flame-thrower of an essayist, originally from the Carolinas; and a movie star, The Actor, whose arrival upsets the equilibrium of this chosen family.
In a remarkable literary feat, Gary Shteyngart has documented through fiction the emotional toll of our recent times: a story of love and friendship that reads like a great Russian novel set in upstate New York. Both elegiac and very, very funny, Our Country Friends is the most ambitious book yet by the author of the beloved bestseller, Super Sad True Love Story.
336 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 2, 2021
2725 people are currently reading
25347 people want to read
About the author
Gary Shteyngart
20 books2,216 followersGary 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.
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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Displaying 1 - 30 of 2,138 reviews
March 6, 2022
2.5 stars: Reading expectations are killing me this year! My previous experience with Gary Shteyngart was reading his fun novel, “Super Sad True Love Story”. His newly released “Our Country Friends” pales in comparison, at least to me. Plus, the press for this one! Of course, I expected to be blown away.
Shteynhgart was on point with prose. He had some fun reality thrown into this pandemic story. He has the epidemiological dictator expecting everyone to maintain a healthy 6 feet distance from each other. He includes silly characters of self-absorbed artists. To add some further zest, the main character has an adopted Asian daughter who seems to be “on the spectrum” with special needs.
Sasha Senderovsky has property(colony) in upstate New York with small cottages surrounding the big house. He has invited four close friends and one “actor” with whom he is working with on a film. Sash’s wife, Masha is the enforcer of social distancing and virus protocol. Sasha’s daughter, Natasha aka Nat, is their adopted Korean daughter who is a delight in the story. Her carefree antics and sweet observations make the story. Oh, and there is Steve the hedgehog.
I just couldn’t get into this story. The character of the actor was a bit too much. Plus, everything involving the actor was silly and a bit annoying to me. Sasha’s neurosis of making his “colony” perfect became tedious.
I’m an outlier. I just didn’t think it was one of his best works, unlike most.
Shteynhgart was on point with prose. He had some fun reality thrown into this pandemic story. He has the epidemiological dictator expecting everyone to maintain a healthy 6 feet distance from each other. He includes silly characters of self-absorbed artists. To add some further zest, the main character has an adopted Asian daughter who seems to be “on the spectrum” with special needs.
Sasha Senderovsky has property(colony) in upstate New York with small cottages surrounding the big house. He has invited four close friends and one “actor” with whom he is working with on a film. Sash’s wife, Masha is the enforcer of social distancing and virus protocol. Sasha’s daughter, Natasha aka Nat, is their adopted Korean daughter who is a delight in the story. Her carefree antics and sweet observations make the story. Oh, and there is Steve the hedgehog.
I just couldn’t get into this story. The character of the actor was a bit too much. Plus, everything involving the actor was silly and a bit annoying to me. Sasha’s neurosis of making his “colony” perfect became tedious.
I’m an outlier. I just didn’t think it was one of his best works, unlike most.
November 8, 2021
Cute start, with the dramatis personae led by Russian names, last characters being VARIOUS AMERICAN VILLAGERS.
We're in the Hudson Valley, escaping NYC at the advent of Covid. Sasha Senderovsky, writer whose better days are behind him, has purchased a country dacha (so to speak) that includes bungalows, little cabins that could.
Could house dramatis personae, that is -- two Korean-Americans, one Indian American, and a tough little Southern gal. Oh. And a mysterious actor somehow involved in negotiations around Sasha's TV screenplay.
Oddly, it works in a light entertainment kind of way. You get caught up in the personalities, the pastoral quaintness, the how-will-this-one-match-up-with-that-one of it all. Sasha and his wife Masha's kid, Natasha (I kid you not), is both adopted and eccentric -- the source of humor at times and of more common sense than the adults provide at other times.
There are references to Chekhov, specifically Uncle Vanya, but Chekhov this ain't. This is amusing fare with typical American (despite the Korean/Indian/Russian angles) obsessions -- sex, booze, and money.
It is also self-consciously designed to be the first important pandemic novel. This means people wear masks, wash down every object touched (remember?), act hyper about contact.
As if. Contact will have its way and Covid fatigue, which could bring down the Roman Empire, will have its way as well. To varying degrees, guards are let down.
Alas, around 70 pp. before the book's end, everything stalls. It is as if Shteyngart has used up all his chits early. It gets claustrophobic, repetitive, and at times boring. It also, bizarrely, indulges in way too much flashback at the wrong time -- almost as if the background info, usually tolerated up front in a book, got lost and started to explain itself at the end.
In summary, the "Wonder what will happen next?" element winds up on life support. I regret to say it doesn't quite make it to the finish line. This baby limps home. This promise ultimately reneges.
Not bad, as contemporary novels go, but not a must-read by any means. Nor does it say anything meaningful about Covid. The pandemic is just "out there," kind of like it is for us outside our windows right now -- one big unentertaining presence outstaying its welcome.
We're in the Hudson Valley, escaping NYC at the advent of Covid. Sasha Senderovsky, writer whose better days are behind him, has purchased a country dacha (so to speak) that includes bungalows, little cabins that could.
Could house dramatis personae, that is -- two Korean-Americans, one Indian American, and a tough little Southern gal. Oh. And a mysterious actor somehow involved in negotiations around Sasha's TV screenplay.
Oddly, it works in a light entertainment kind of way. You get caught up in the personalities, the pastoral quaintness, the how-will-this-one-match-up-with-that-one of it all. Sasha and his wife Masha's kid, Natasha (I kid you not), is both adopted and eccentric -- the source of humor at times and of more common sense than the adults provide at other times.
There are references to Chekhov, specifically Uncle Vanya, but Chekhov this ain't. This is amusing fare with typical American (despite the Korean/Indian/Russian angles) obsessions -- sex, booze, and money.
It is also self-consciously designed to be the first important pandemic novel. This means people wear masks, wash down every object touched (remember?), act hyper about contact.
As if. Contact will have its way and Covid fatigue, which could bring down the Roman Empire, will have its way as well. To varying degrees, guards are let down.
Alas, around 70 pp. before the book's end, everything stalls. It is as if Shteyngart has used up all his chits early. It gets claustrophobic, repetitive, and at times boring. It also, bizarrely, indulges in way too much flashback at the wrong time -- almost as if the background info, usually tolerated up front in a book, got lost and started to explain itself at the end.
In summary, the "Wonder what will happen next?" element winds up on life support. I regret to say it doesn't quite make it to the finish line. This baby limps home. This promise ultimately reneges.
Not bad, as contemporary novels go, but not a must-read by any means. Nor does it say anything meaningful about Covid. The pandemic is just "out there," kind of like it is for us outside our windows right now -- one big unentertaining presence outstaying its welcome.
September 18, 2025
Such a tedious slog: glib, smug, and self-indulgent. This has been overhyped as the first great (or maybe just the first) pandemic novel, but I think it's just too soon, especially for what's purported to be a comic and satirical pandemic novel. Comedy equals tragedy plus time, and maybe I'm just not ready yet to laugh yet.
I admit that I was (sort of) intrigued by the jacket-copy conceit of a contemporary Chekhov play about friends gathering on a country estate during the plague year to vent their middle-aged ennui, disappointment, and thwarted lust. Beyond the shallow nods to the great 19th-century Russian novels, Our Country Friends is also an all-too-obvious appropriation of the basic conceit of The Decameron, only without the master storytelling. (Just imagine how super-clever Shteyngart must have been to name a character "Dee Cameron"? I kid, I kid...)
And maybe a more talented and sharper satirist could have pulled all of this off, speaking to the berserk insanity of the cultural and political moment of spring and summer and fall 2020, but Shteyngart just isn't the guy. Except as an embodiment of everything that was (and remains) wrong about the zeitgeist.
Reading this felt like being stuck in lockdown for month after month in a bourgeois-bohemian Hudson Valley bungalow with a minimally self-aware aging hipster acquaintance of an acquaintance who's an overeducated and overpaid Brooklyn culture industry worker in his late 40s, who has an overinflated sense of literary prowess and personal entitlement all out of proportion to actual life achievements, who kvetches about first world problems like bad Wi-Fi while actual horrors and tragedies are unfolding just offscreen, who is completely convinced (despite all evidence to the contrary) that he's witty and amusing, who assumes that ethnic stereotypes can substitute for actual characterization, who whines endlessly about having sold out while enjoying all of the comfortable trappings of wealth, who endlessly recycles the same stale shtick and bad jokes and lame Twitter memes, who is too stuck inside the suffocating self-absorption of narcissism and privilege to be remotely self-aware about it, let alone satirize it.
I skimmed the final 100 pages, but I should have pulled the plug on this much, much earlier.
I admit that I was (sort of) intrigued by the jacket-copy conceit of a contemporary Chekhov play about friends gathering on a country estate during the plague year to vent their middle-aged ennui, disappointment, and thwarted lust. Beyond the shallow nods to the great 19th-century Russian novels, Our Country Friends is also an all-too-obvious appropriation of the basic conceit of The Decameron, only without the master storytelling. (Just imagine how super-clever Shteyngart must have been to name a character "Dee Cameron"? I kid, I kid...)
And maybe a more talented and sharper satirist could have pulled all of this off, speaking to the berserk insanity of the cultural and political moment of spring and summer and fall 2020, but Shteyngart just isn't the guy. Except as an embodiment of everything that was (and remains) wrong about the zeitgeist.
Reading this felt like being stuck in lockdown for month after month in a bourgeois-bohemian Hudson Valley bungalow with a minimally self-aware aging hipster acquaintance of an acquaintance who's an overeducated and overpaid Brooklyn culture industry worker in his late 40s, who has an overinflated sense of literary prowess and personal entitlement all out of proportion to actual life achievements, who kvetches about first world problems like bad Wi-Fi while actual horrors and tragedies are unfolding just offscreen, who is completely convinced (despite all evidence to the contrary) that he's witty and amusing, who assumes that ethnic stereotypes can substitute for actual characterization, who whines endlessly about having sold out while enjoying all of the comfortable trappings of wealth, who endlessly recycles the same stale shtick and bad jokes and lame Twitter memes, who is too stuck inside the suffocating self-absorption of narcissism and privilege to be remotely self-aware about it, let alone satirize it.
I skimmed the final 100 pages, but I should have pulled the plug on this much, much earlier.
November 7, 2021
I smile whenever I pick up a new book from Gary Shteyngart, because I know there's a treat in store. And with Our Country Friends, he has more than delivered. While his Lake Success was a truly original take on the tRump administration, here he approaches the year 2020 with Chekhovian flair. Alexander (Sasha) Senderovsky invites a curated selection of friends to his upstate compound that consists of five bungalows and a main house, a group comprised mostly of second generation immigrants -- from Korea, India and, naturally being Shteyngart, Russia. The one exception is the catalyst for disaster, an AList actor, expected to star in a miniseries based on one of Sasha's books. What struck me were the similarities between author and character, rendering this almost a work of metafiction, sharing his innermost emotions about the pandemic, the death of George Floyd, the experiences of teaching writing at a prestigious college. The writing is superb, the situations, truly heartfelt. The resolutions unexpected and gut wrenching. Kudos.
Also, as I've been present at several events where he has appeared, I am hoping that when this book is published in November, he will be able to go on the road again. I'd love to see him in person discussing this book.
Also, as I've been present at several events where he has appeared, I am hoping that when this book is published in November, he will be able to go on the road again. I'd love to see him in person discussing this book.
September 24, 2021
A disappointing, self-indulgent novel that is too long, goes nowhere and leaves plot lines unfinished. The characters are unlikeable, insecure, and unreasonably juvenile in their thoughts and interactions. I found myself putting this book down, and then dreading picking it up again, and in the end, I waded through more than half in the hope of finding some redeeming quality, then skimmed to the end to make sure I didn’t miss anything - it wasn’t worth the effort. The premise was intriguing, but the story just didn’t deliver.
November 23, 2021
Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for my ARC in exchange for my honest review. This book will be published November 2, 2021.
I was SO EXCITED to read this book, especially after reading a 5 star review from an author I follow. The description sounded so good…
I was tempted to quit about 25% in but felt obligated to finish so I could review it properly. I loved the premise but I was thoroughly bored. I didn’t care about any of the characters. Although some of the sentences were quite eloquent, I really can’t stand the super long, run-on sentences that last a whole paragraph.
This was my first book by this author and despite his numerous awards, it will probably be my last. Book would be best for existing fans of this author.
I was SO EXCITED to read this book, especially after reading a 5 star review from an author I follow. The description sounded so good…
I was tempted to quit about 25% in but felt obligated to finish so I could review it properly. I loved the premise but I was thoroughly bored. I didn’t care about any of the characters. Although some of the sentences were quite eloquent, I really can’t stand the super long, run-on sentences that last a whole paragraph.
This was my first book by this author and despite his numerous awards, it will probably be my last. Book would be best for existing fans of this author.
October 27, 2021
You know those books that stay with you, with characters who worm their way into your head and heart and continue to haunt you long after you’ve finished the last page? OUR COUNTRY FRIENDS is that book for me. It’s been a few weeks since I finished it the first time, and I’ve been finding myself missing it, like an old friend. This morning, as I started writing this review, I picked it up to re-read a few random pages in the middle, and within a minute, I was laughing and trying not to cry at the same time (I have three teenage sons who make merciless fun of me). I ended up re-reading the rest of the book again, and now, I’m in that rare state you get in when you finish an amazing book: my heart full, utterly satisfied and grateful to the author for creating this world and allowing me in for a time, but also a little sad, filled with regret at having to leave it.
I love Gary Shteyngart and his books (especially Super Sad True Love Story) but this is by far my favorite novel of his. It’s hilarious, as all his books are, but the humor is laced with generosity, poignancy, and grace. It’s about a quirky group of people who quarantine together in a country house, so in one sense, it’s a pandemic-quarantine book, but it’s not really about that. It’s about so many things—sex, infatuation, food, racism, immigration, adoption, stalking, Russian writers, K-pop, Japanese reality TV shows, writing—but at heart, it’s about those friendships that come along once in a lifetime, the friends who become closer than family. It’s about how we create, sever, and mend those lifelong bonds, how we wound and heal those we love most.
I do wonder if a tiny part of why I love this book so much is its timeliness. It showed up for me exactly when I needed it. At the beginning of the quarantine, I read Severance (another funny but deeply touching novel about, but also not at all about, a global pandemic) over and over again; it was the only novel I could read. Our Country Friends feels like the perfect bookend, as I find myself doing the same thing with it as I’m cautiously emerging from the quarantine.
In short, I LOVED this novel. It’s extraordinary. You need to read it! It comes out in November, so request the ARC, preorder, etc., and read it as soon as you can. (And let me know what you think!)
I love Gary Shteyngart and his books (especially Super Sad True Love Story) but this is by far my favorite novel of his. It’s hilarious, as all his books are, but the humor is laced with generosity, poignancy, and grace. It’s about a quirky group of people who quarantine together in a country house, so in one sense, it’s a pandemic-quarantine book, but it’s not really about that. It’s about so many things—sex, infatuation, food, racism, immigration, adoption, stalking, Russian writers, K-pop, Japanese reality TV shows, writing—but at heart, it’s about those friendships that come along once in a lifetime, the friends who become closer than family. It’s about how we create, sever, and mend those lifelong bonds, how we wound and heal those we love most.
I do wonder if a tiny part of why I love this book so much is its timeliness. It showed up for me exactly when I needed it. At the beginning of the quarantine, I read Severance (another funny but deeply touching novel about, but also not at all about, a global pandemic) over and over again; it was the only novel I could read. Our Country Friends feels like the perfect bookend, as I find myself doing the same thing with it as I’m cautiously emerging from the quarantine.
In short, I LOVED this novel. It’s extraordinary. You need to read it! It comes out in November, so request the ARC, preorder, etc., and read it as soon as you can. (And let me know what you think!)
November 30, 2021
“My dear ones, welcome to the House of People’s Friendship”….
enter at your own risk!
“All of us are useful and expendable in turn”…
When expectations are low going into a book one has purchased - but then didn’t read it right away due to a low review from a wonderful respective friend ( ha, ha, Barbara)….then I figure everything ‘up’ is gravy. (laughing to myself - I don’t even like gravy)…but you get the
point.
I laughed - a handful of times - so that’s got to be worth something - doesn’t it?/!
Did I think it was always a nice book….speak anything remarkably political correct half the time—no —
And….
I was aware that this book could be a COVID-TRIGGER-HORROR to some readers—boring to others…and even make a few of us readers (as myself), feel ashamed for the numerous holes in my literary repertoire.
Not being a student of Anton Chekhov’s — the many references reminded me (once again), how ‘un-smart’ I am. (Yet, I understood this book -with all its characters was being modeled after and also a tribute to Chekhov’s plays)….
But… if I googled him and read more about his brilliant accomplishments and contributions to society - (a playwright, short story writer, a philosopher, an artist….. who “captured life in Russia of his time by using a deceptively simple technique devoid of obtrusive literary devices”….and was considered one of the greatest writers in the world…does that count for something? —-a little more smart?
I’m now considering adding ‘Uncle Vanya’ and ‘Cherry Orchard’ to my ‘classic-to-read’ list….[the insurmountable book-benefit-gifts keep on giving].
So…with my low expectations for “Our Country Friends”….I was pleasantly surprised- and not ashamed to say I liked it.
I’ll never forget the first time I read Gary Shteyngart “Absurdistan”. I was in stitches.
So — I figured there would be inappropriate (rather debatable), humor ….and there was > much to throw darts at > but I liked it anyway.
A very character driven novel - (Sasha, Marsha, Karen, Ed, Dee, Nat, The Actor)…..I enjoyed the collective-group: Academics, professionals, families and friends, (and acquaintances), and the precocious-probably on the spectrum-adorable child.
I found the ‘get-away’ covid-bubble compound - distant from Manhattan- easy to visualize. ….
The ‘group’ of friends ….(as we could imagine, and presume), shared meals, walks, badminton, drinking, smoking, conversations, (often heated, hilarious, incongruous, tackless & tasteless) — each having their own bungalow for sleeping (ha, but like musical chairs—there were some musical bed): cough cough > no spoilers.
A few fun-excerpts …..
“You should’ve seen these two when I met them, Karen was saying apropos of Senderovsky and Vinod. The ‘things’ they wore. I would lecture them all the time. When you guys dress the way you want to dress and go to parties, people just think you’re weird. When you dress like I tell you to dress, people think you’re charming. Yeah, I know it’s a freaking shallow town!”
“How did they dress? Dee asked, between mouthfuls of pasta she thought delicious. Give us some highlights”.
“Yeah, how do they dress? Nat sang out”.
“Well, your ‘daddy’ here wire puka shells”.
“Everyone laughed, including Nat, who did not know what puka shells were.
Marsha checked this off as appropriate social behavior—the need to fit in”.
“I can picture at all too well, the Actor said”.
“Before I am buried I want my body to be smothered in olive oil and salt, he said”.
“Daddy’s not going to die for a long time, Marsha told Nat. He was just being silly”.
“I might die before him! Nat sang out”.
“Now why would you say that?”
“Yeah, why? Karen said.
“Because of climate change”.
“Ed, pleased by his food’s reception, I just finished an extra sidebar of artisanal gin and felt his tongue loosening accordingly. I call Nat’s generation Generation L, he pronounced. As in last”.
“Ed, what the hell is wrong with you? Karen said”.
“All I am saying is that it’s irresponsible to bring a new person into this world, Ed said”.
“Which they didn’t! Karen said. No one here brought anyone into this world”.
“I’m still totally fertile, Dee said as a sidebar, but I am with Ed. No more children”.
“Oh, the Actor thought”.
“Yeah, I’m adopted, Nat declared to Ed”.
“The Actor perked up? sensing his rival what is about to be taken to task.
A silence over took them, filled by the mad chirping birds sensing the first tranche of wind descending down the
Berkshire. Senderovsky realized that he had not put any music on the handsome red radio”.
“Senderovsky watched his wife in the sundress returned to her patients and her child’s lesson plans and thought of the raft of mystery that floats between two partners, even contented ones, as they turn in for the night. He wished he could fall in love with someone as his wife evidently had done. He has chased after beauty for such a long part of his life, until he had caught up with it and found it, like everything else, worthy of no more than a chapter or two of heightened prose”.
“Now all that mattered was the property and it’s salvation. The dewy land and the rustle of dying trees and companionship of friends
disembarking at the station and the sound of grilled meat being turned over, once, twice—all of it
must remain his until the day he coughed his last”.
Much more pleasure to be read ….unless nothing about the reflection of the first lockdown in March of 2020 —appeals to you — with characters ‘not’ like many of us —
Last…NOT to forget this novel is Tragicomedy….> relevant to our times (too soon for many)….
but with the serious aspects - it allowed me to think a little deeper about what we’ve been through - as well as specific issues to contemplate.
4.5 stars.
enter at your own risk!
“All of us are useful and expendable in turn”…
When expectations are low going into a book one has purchased - but then didn’t read it right away due to a low review from a wonderful respective friend ( ha, ha, Barbara)….then I figure everything ‘up’ is gravy. (laughing to myself - I don’t even like gravy)…but you get the
point.
I laughed - a handful of times - so that’s got to be worth something - doesn’t it?/!
Did I think it was always a nice book….speak anything remarkably political correct half the time—no —
And….
I was aware that this book could be a COVID-TRIGGER-HORROR to some readers—boring to others…and even make a few of us readers (as myself), feel ashamed for the numerous holes in my literary repertoire.
Not being a student of Anton Chekhov’s — the many references reminded me (once again), how ‘un-smart’ I am. (Yet, I understood this book -with all its characters was being modeled after and also a tribute to Chekhov’s plays)….
But… if I googled him and read more about his brilliant accomplishments and contributions to society - (a playwright, short story writer, a philosopher, an artist….. who “captured life in Russia of his time by using a deceptively simple technique devoid of obtrusive literary devices”….and was considered one of the greatest writers in the world…does that count for something? —-a little more smart?
I’m now considering adding ‘Uncle Vanya’ and ‘Cherry Orchard’ to my ‘classic-to-read’ list….[the insurmountable book-benefit-gifts keep on giving].
So…with my low expectations for “Our Country Friends”….I was pleasantly surprised- and not ashamed to say I liked it.
I’ll never forget the first time I read Gary Shteyngart “Absurdistan”. I was in stitches.
So — I figured there would be inappropriate (rather debatable), humor ….and there was > much to throw darts at > but I liked it anyway.
A very character driven novel - (Sasha, Marsha, Karen, Ed, Dee, Nat, The Actor)…..I enjoyed the collective-group: Academics, professionals, families and friends, (and acquaintances), and the precocious-probably on the spectrum-adorable child.
I found the ‘get-away’ covid-bubble compound - distant from Manhattan- easy to visualize. ….
The ‘group’ of friends ….(as we could imagine, and presume), shared meals, walks, badminton, drinking, smoking, conversations, (often heated, hilarious, incongruous, tackless & tasteless) — each having their own bungalow for sleeping (ha, but like musical chairs—there were some musical bed): cough cough > no spoilers.
A few fun-excerpts …..
“You should’ve seen these two when I met them, Karen was saying apropos of Senderovsky and Vinod. The ‘things’ they wore. I would lecture them all the time. When you guys dress the way you want to dress and go to parties, people just think you’re weird. When you dress like I tell you to dress, people think you’re charming. Yeah, I know it’s a freaking shallow town!”
“How did they dress? Dee asked, between mouthfuls of pasta she thought delicious. Give us some highlights”.
“Yeah, how do they dress? Nat sang out”.
“Well, your ‘daddy’ here wire puka shells”.
“Everyone laughed, including Nat, who did not know what puka shells were.
Marsha checked this off as appropriate social behavior—the need to fit in”.
“I can picture at all too well, the Actor said”.
“Before I am buried I want my body to be smothered in olive oil and salt, he said”.
“Daddy’s not going to die for a long time, Marsha told Nat. He was just being silly”.
“I might die before him! Nat sang out”.
“Now why would you say that?”
“Yeah, why? Karen said.
“Because of climate change”.
“Ed, pleased by his food’s reception, I just finished an extra sidebar of artisanal gin and felt his tongue loosening accordingly. I call Nat’s generation Generation L, he pronounced. As in last”.
“Ed, what the hell is wrong with you? Karen said”.
“All I am saying is that it’s irresponsible to bring a new person into this world, Ed said”.
“Which they didn’t! Karen said. No one here brought anyone into this world”.
“I’m still totally fertile, Dee said as a sidebar, but I am with Ed. No more children”.
“Oh, the Actor thought”.
“Yeah, I’m adopted, Nat declared to Ed”.
“The Actor perked up? sensing his rival what is about to be taken to task.
A silence over took them, filled by the mad chirping birds sensing the first tranche of wind descending down the
Berkshire. Senderovsky realized that he had not put any music on the handsome red radio”.
“Senderovsky watched his wife in the sundress returned to her patients and her child’s lesson plans and thought of the raft of mystery that floats between two partners, even contented ones, as they turn in for the night. He wished he could fall in love with someone as his wife evidently had done. He has chased after beauty for such a long part of his life, until he had caught up with it and found it, like everything else, worthy of no more than a chapter or two of heightened prose”.
“Now all that mattered was the property and it’s salvation. The dewy land and the rustle of dying trees and companionship of friends
disembarking at the station and the sound of grilled meat being turned over, once, twice—all of it
must remain his until the day he coughed his last”.
Much more pleasure to be read ….unless nothing about the reflection of the first lockdown in March of 2020 —appeals to you — with characters ‘not’ like many of us —
Last…NOT to forget this novel is Tragicomedy….> relevant to our times (too soon for many)….
but with the serious aspects - it allowed me to think a little deeper about what we’ve been through - as well as specific issues to contemplate.
4.5 stars.
November 1, 2021
This may be my favorite book of the year. It's also the first novel written by Shteyngart that I've read and the first set during the pandemic, a topic many authors wanted to avoid throughout 2020 as we all had too much of the reality to bear.
The plot: Eight people come together at a compound in the country upstate to weather the pandemic lockdown. There is the main house they call the House on the Hill where they will all congregate for dinner and conversation and five separate bungalows. Most of the group have been friends for years (and bring that shared-history with them as baggage) but there are a couple of newcomers to the group, including a famous actor, and the eight-year-old adopted daughter of the compound's owner.
For this captive audience, many weighty issues arise: love, lust, friendship, betrayal, social media, immigration, racism and even the specter of death. These are all fallible human beings who make plenty of mistakes. What's superb is how insightfully the author treats his characters, some of whom grow quite a bit in these months spent in isolation from the world at large. There are laugh-out-loud moments as well as tears. This character-driven book will not be for everyone but it was one I found quite satisfying and memorable.
I received an arc of this novel from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. Many thanks for the opportunity to be introduced to a fine writer who is new to me.
The plot: Eight people come together at a compound in the country upstate to weather the pandemic lockdown. There is the main house they call the House on the Hill where they will all congregate for dinner and conversation and five separate bungalows. Most of the group have been friends for years (and bring that shared-history with them as baggage) but there are a couple of newcomers to the group, including a famous actor, and the eight-year-old adopted daughter of the compound's owner.
For this captive audience, many weighty issues arise: love, lust, friendship, betrayal, social media, immigration, racism and even the specter of death. These are all fallible human beings who make plenty of mistakes. What's superb is how insightfully the author treats his characters, some of whom grow quite a bit in these months spent in isolation from the world at large. There are laugh-out-loud moments as well as tears. This character-driven book will not be for everyone but it was one I found quite satisfying and memorable.
I received an arc of this novel from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. Many thanks for the opportunity to be introduced to a fine writer who is new to me.
September 20, 2022
Beautifully written, this book is one of the first I have read that deals almost exclusively with the confinement period we all just lived through. A group of 7 to 8 friends are gathered in the New England compound of a Russian writer and we see relationships bend, fold, break, bloom, explode, reform...It is full of wonderful literary references and highly memorable characters. I liked the symbolic black truck which hovers like a raven over much of the story and the tie-ins to the events of 2020.
A writing sample:
Ed watched her. He could reach over and hold her hand. He could internalize the sordidness of her struggle, her helplessness, and he could walk her through to the other side. It has recently emerged that the housemates on the Japanese reality show had been coached all along. Just actors in a play. Playthings. And so was she after all, with her tidy middle-class bank account and her grasping middle-class soul, although she had had the temerity to think she could write and talk herself into being someone original. Their gaze met for a second. She would not unwrinkle her lower face for him, the lower face that lived within the catalog of past slights and which counterbalanced the wit and sparkle of her eyes, but he would still take her as she was. If given the signal, he would sweep her into the folks of a long and complicated dilemma, into a mistake they could make together. (p. 211)
Truly a fun and gratifying read!
My list of Pulitzer hopefuls here! Come today and vote on your favorite!
A writing sample:
Ed watched her. He could reach over and hold her hand. He could internalize the sordidness of her struggle, her helplessness, and he could walk her through to the other side. It has recently emerged that the housemates on the Japanese reality show had been coached all along. Just actors in a play. Playthings. And so was she after all, with her tidy middle-class bank account and her grasping middle-class soul, although she had had the temerity to think she could write and talk herself into being someone original. Their gaze met for a second. She would not unwrinkle her lower face for him, the lower face that lived within the catalog of past slights and which counterbalanced the wit and sparkle of her eyes, but he would still take her as she was. If given the signal, he would sweep her into the folks of a long and complicated dilemma, into a mistake they could make together. (p. 211)
Truly a fun and gratifying read!
My list of Pulitzer hopefuls here! Come today and vote on your favorite!
November 23, 2021
3.5 stars. The general concept here hits you repeatedly over the course of the book. You remember all the old novels you've read, where the wealthy gather with their friends for a season at their country estate, seeking peace from troubles in the city, and you can see them superimposed on these characters, gathered in upstate New York as the pandemic throws the city into danger and chaos. Friends gather, love sparks, relationships stumble, drama ensues. It is familiar and it is somehow new in these new circumstances.
We have an unusual cast of characters. The landowner's livelihood hangs in the balance. (To remind us of where he is drawing from, Shteyngart refers to his fictional counterpart as "the landowner" more often than he calls him by his name.) And the pandemic hangs over everything. It was both too much and comfortingly familiar to see the characters' attempts to distance and protect each other, especially in their first weeks together. Covid hangs over everything the way a war would hang over one of those novels from the 1800's you read years ago.
I enjoyed the depictions of the characters, some of which are truly scathing. (The wealthiest of them, though, somehow remains mostly above reproach, which I found odd given how much class plays into the story.) There is humor everywhere despite the dark cloud. But there is also a deep distrust for everything outside their little set of bungalows, especially as the rural white people around them start hanging thin blue line flags and the sounds of gunfire in the distance increase in frequency.
By the end of the story everyone has changed. Well, mostly. There are some things Shteyngart dives right into and other things he leaves weirdly off the table. (Sasha, the aforementioned landowner and central character, is practically an absent father who takes almost no interest in his child that we see on the page, particularly noteworthy as his wife who is still working is managing all the childcare. And it just sits there without any real consideration.) There is a diversity of characters, many of them immigrants or children of immigrants, four of them of South or East Asian descent, though they are almost all relatively wealthy. (Even if the landowner has squandered most of his reputation and savings, but that sure sounds like many of those 1800's novels, doesn't it?) They have conversations about the pandemic, about their work, about race, and about class and mostly these do not feel like you are being beaten around the head by the book's themes or the time and place of the setting.
But I still felt the limitations of the book. There were so many things left unexplored. The one character who has no real assets and no prestige is given the least attention until the very end of the book. Sasha is so annoying that I wanted to shake him, even though I knew this was that excess of self-deprecation by proxy that can happen in novels where you've created a fictional stand-in of yourself so as to appear somewhat humble and self-aware, but mostly I just didn't like him at all and didn't see what the others saw in him. As much as the concept did the heavy lifting, there were still times when it felt like it was playing a bit too safe and I can't quite put my finger on why.
We have an unusual cast of characters. The landowner's livelihood hangs in the balance. (To remind us of where he is drawing from, Shteyngart refers to his fictional counterpart as "the landowner" more often than he calls him by his name.) And the pandemic hangs over everything. It was both too much and comfortingly familiar to see the characters' attempts to distance and protect each other, especially in their first weeks together. Covid hangs over everything the way a war would hang over one of those novels from the 1800's you read years ago.
I enjoyed the depictions of the characters, some of which are truly scathing. (The wealthiest of them, though, somehow remains mostly above reproach, which I found odd given how much class plays into the story.) There is humor everywhere despite the dark cloud. But there is also a deep distrust for everything outside their little set of bungalows, especially as the rural white people around them start hanging thin blue line flags and the sounds of gunfire in the distance increase in frequency.
By the end of the story everyone has changed. Well, mostly. There are some things Shteyngart dives right into and other things he leaves weirdly off the table. (Sasha, the aforementioned landowner and central character, is practically an absent father who takes almost no interest in his child that we see on the page, particularly noteworthy as his wife who is still working is managing all the childcare. And it just sits there without any real consideration.) There is a diversity of characters, many of them immigrants or children of immigrants, four of them of South or East Asian descent, though they are almost all relatively wealthy. (Even if the landowner has squandered most of his reputation and savings, but that sure sounds like many of those 1800's novels, doesn't it?) They have conversations about the pandemic, about their work, about race, and about class and mostly these do not feel like you are being beaten around the head by the book's themes or the time and place of the setting.
But I still felt the limitations of the book. There were so many things left unexplored. The one character who has no real assets and no prestige is given the least attention until the very end of the book. Sasha is so annoying that I wanted to shake him, even though I knew this was that excess of self-deprecation by proxy that can happen in novels where you've created a fictional stand-in of yourself so as to appear somewhat humble and self-aware, but mostly I just didn't like him at all and didn't see what the others saw in him. As much as the concept did the heavy lifting, there were still times when it felt like it was playing a bit too safe and I can't quite put my finger on why.
April 9, 2022
Once again, a book touted by professional reviewers as brilliant was far from a favorite of mine. I applaud Shteyngart's attempt to write the great American Chekovian novel but what was successful for Chekov in 19c Russia, fell flat during covid in upstate N.Y. This was a rollercoaster ride at best with many low points and just a few peaks.
The author uses many elements found in Chekov's short stories. The characters are parodies: the groveling writer, the egotistical actor, the troubled marriage, romantic entanglements, the wealthy and unhappy female. "Every passing year would mean being more alone, until even the bathroom mirror of her loft would figure out a way to reject her, would show her the face of another." This nouveau riche woman recently developed an app that causes people to fall in love - not highly believable. The only likable character is caught in a life of resignation at what might have been.
These eight mostly longtime friends are quarantined for three months at an idyllic country estate where they reminisce over long dinners of gourmet food and expensive alcohol. They are suffering through the pandemic. Really? There were some very funny lines and many too clever passages. Had it not been set during the pandemic, I may have found it funnier. But it just made me angry to think these privileged urbanites thought they were suffering; eight people having long in person discussions with friends, long walks on country roads, fine cuisine, how many would have traded their quarantined experience with that? I know, it's a spoof.
I felt the novel worked best when these childhood friends talked about their shared histories of growing up the children of immigrants, different ethnicities but shared experiences. There is no doubt Shteyngart can write, and I'm sure many loved this book. I usually read three novels by an author before I decide to abandon their writing. I am sorry Mr. Shteyngart; I will not be reading your work again.
The author uses many elements found in Chekov's short stories. The characters are parodies: the groveling writer, the egotistical actor, the troubled marriage, romantic entanglements, the wealthy and unhappy female. "Every passing year would mean being more alone, until even the bathroom mirror of her loft would figure out a way to reject her, would show her the face of another." This nouveau riche woman recently developed an app that causes people to fall in love - not highly believable. The only likable character is caught in a life of resignation at what might have been.
These eight mostly longtime friends are quarantined for three months at an idyllic country estate where they reminisce over long dinners of gourmet food and expensive alcohol. They are suffering through the pandemic. Really? There were some very funny lines and many too clever passages. Had it not been set during the pandemic, I may have found it funnier. But it just made me angry to think these privileged urbanites thought they were suffering; eight people having long in person discussions with friends, long walks on country roads, fine cuisine, how many would have traded their quarantined experience with that? I know, it's a spoof.
I felt the novel worked best when these childhood friends talked about their shared histories of growing up the children of immigrants, different ethnicities but shared experiences. There is no doubt Shteyngart can write, and I'm sure many loved this book. I usually read three novels by an author before I decide to abandon their writing. I am sorry Mr. Shteyngart; I will not be reading your work again.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 24, 2022
Gary Shteyngart is a rarity: a satirist with a deep heart and a soul that overflows with kindness and empathy. OUR COUNTRY FRIENDS is such a delight because it is equal parts Chekhov and Larry David. I loved it. I loved the way I smiled in recognition at the characters' foibles, laughed with them when they were happy, and cried with them when they weren't. We've all been broken by the pandemic; books like OUR COUNTRY FRIENDS are the glue that helps keep us together.
March 20, 2022
Clever, funny, and poignant, Our Country Friends is framed as a Chekov play set on a country estate in the Hudson Valley during the first months of the pandemic. Shteyngart deftly reveals the flaws and foibles of the landowner, his family, and their guests. Aside from a couple of feverish dream chapters, Our Country Friends is excellent.
Read
December 11, 2021DNF I quit out of boredom: too many self-absorbed characters and not enough of anything else. I will not be rating or reviewing. This is my opinion only.
January 5, 2022
"Our Country Friends" is a satire of life in the U.S. during the early months of the pandemic. Specifically, it looks at Sasha and Masha, (husband and wife in their fifties), and the bungalow community they have formed with Sasha's dearest friends. Perhaps the most sympathetic person here is the couple's 8 year old daughter Nat, who has Asperger's. Sasha is a novelist who has invited his friends to his country home where they can all evade contact with the virus, while enjoying gourmet meals and the bucolic setting.
To add further interest, Masha and his wife are Russian Americans who adopted Nat from China. Two friends are of Korean descent, one friend is Indian American, and one is a younger American woman who had been Sasha's student. The odd man out is a character called The Actor, who is there to collaborate with Sasha on a film version of his book.
Some passages were spot on in their satire. The observations about Russian immigrants (Shteyngart's own family background) were particularly interesting to me. However, I found myself liking the novel less and less as I read more of it. I could not relate to the characters, who left me feeling cold. Each one was lacking a moral center, with a couple of exceptions.
I had loved the author's Little Failure. This is a much different book, but it fell short for me.
2.5 stars
To add further interest, Masha and his wife are Russian Americans who adopted Nat from China. Two friends are of Korean descent, one friend is Indian American, and one is a younger American woman who had been Sasha's student. The odd man out is a character called The Actor, who is there to collaborate with Sasha on a film version of his book.
Some passages were spot on in their satire. The observations about Russian immigrants (Shteyngart's own family background) were particularly interesting to me. However, I found myself liking the novel less and less as I read more of it. I could not relate to the characters, who left me feeling cold. Each one was lacking a moral center, with a couple of exceptions.
I had loved the author's Little Failure. This is a much different book, but it fell short for me.
2.5 stars
March 10, 2022
Kind of self-indulgent? There are also a lot of characters I didn't like and wasn't especially interested in.
This is one of the first pandemic novels I've read, and I was interested in seeing how the author would handle these recent events. And he's an adept and engaging writer, but ultimately, this was kind of a flop for me.
A writer/professor and his wife, a psychologist, have a country house with a bunch of little satellite bungalows around the main house, and they fill them with a collection of people, some old friends, an ex-student, and a very handsome and famous actor with whom the writer-professor hopes to launch a TV project. They're all rather unpleasant with the exception of Vinod, an old friend who is just kind of boring, Karen, an old friend who has gotten extraordinarily rich by inventing a popular app, and the writer's daughter, who is somewhere on the spectrum and full of obsessions (mainly with a Korean boy-band). The relationship between Karen and this daughter was definitely my favorite thing in the book. These characters have big delicious dinners on a covered porch that sounds amazing, they take walks in the countryside where they see Blue Lives Matter signs and signs in support of the terrible president, some of them sleep with people they shouldn't sleep with, or maybe people they should, and then at the end.... (spoilers below)
... one of them takes FOREVER to die. So many swirling, distorted (and unearned by the previous chapters of the book) reminiscences. I didn't like the book much, but I quite disliked the ending.
This is one of the first pandemic novels I've read, and I was interested in seeing how the author would handle these recent events. And he's an adept and engaging writer, but ultimately, this was kind of a flop for me.
A writer/professor and his wife, a psychologist, have a country house with a bunch of little satellite bungalows around the main house, and they fill them with a collection of people, some old friends, an ex-student, and a very handsome and famous actor with whom the writer-professor hopes to launch a TV project. They're all rather unpleasant with the exception of Vinod, an old friend who is just kind of boring, Karen, an old friend who has gotten extraordinarily rich by inventing a popular app, and the writer's daughter, who is somewhere on the spectrum and full of obsessions (mainly with a Korean boy-band). The relationship between Karen and this daughter was definitely my favorite thing in the book. These characters have big delicious dinners on a covered porch that sounds amazing, they take walks in the countryside where they see Blue Lives Matter signs and signs in support of the terrible president, some of them sleep with people they shouldn't sleep with, or maybe people they should, and then at the end.... (spoilers below)
... one of them takes FOREVER to die. So many swirling, distorted (and unearned by the previous chapters of the book) reminiscences. I didn't like the book much, but I quite disliked the ending.
July 7, 2021
Gary Shteynart’s Our Country Friends is a full-on pandemic novel, born and reflective of the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown. Shteyngart locates the action in the Berkshires, with a Shteyngartian cast of two married Russian emigres (Sasha and Masha); their Harbin-born daughter; mutual friends of many years Karen Cho, Vinod Mehta, and Ed Kim; Dee Cameron, a former writing student of Sasha’s and a stand-out beauty; and The Actor. Dee’s now a popular essayist: ”Her essays were the equivalent of a new prisoner coming up to the toughest inmate in the can and slugging them right in the face. She wrote with a disdain for weak-bellied sentiment, mixed in with tough-love observations about the social class that had recently welcomed her into their messy brownstones.” Sasha’s invited them to shelter from and wait out the pandemic on his Berkshires compound, with its five themed guest cottages. ”People were dying in the city. Some more than others. The virus had roamed the earth but had chosen to settle down there, just as the parents of Masha, [Sasha] Senderovsky, Karen, and Vinod had chosen it four decades ago as a place to escape the nighttime reverberations of Stalin and Hitler, of partition and Partition, of the pain that radiated not in distant memory but cracked outright from their own fathers’ hands. / Catching a [cell phone] signal in the main hosue, the bungalow colonists learned of what was happening a hundred and twenty miles down the river, and they felt many things, but mostly they felt guilt.”
Sasha hopes to reinvigorate his flagging finances and career by convincing The Actor to collaborate on and collaborate on a script; Vinod hopes to fulfill his long unrequited love for Karen and to launch his unpublished novel; Karen hopes to fascinate Sasha and Masha’s socially awkward and isolated pre-teen daughter Nat; and Ed and The Actor both lust after Dee. Sasha’s inviting The Actor is purely transactional: ”Of course, someone else was coming, too. Someone who was not a friend. Someone who made Senderovsky, already a drinker, drink more.” And Shteyngart conveys why Sasha greets The Actor with mixed emotions: ”I’ve been rereading Odysseus this morning,’ The Actor said. Oh no, Senderovsky thought. ‘I was thinking about my own commonalities with Odysseus.’” All the while, Masha, a psychiatrist, struggles to maintain her now virtual psychiatric practice and to keep the compound COVID-free: ”They force me to be somebody I’m not, Masha thought. They mistake my caring for authoritarianism, and then I have no choice but to become Stalin in an apron. But what option do I have if I’m to keep these cretins from getting sick?” And as Sasha welcomes Vinod to the compound: ”Senderovsky spread out his arms. ‘Can’t hug,’ he said. And, just to warn you, Masha’s gone all epidemiological.’ ‘She is a doctor,’ Vinod said.”.
Our Country Friends feels initially like a too-obvious Chekhovian set-piece. But Shteyngart’s deft characterizations of New York ethnic intellectuals in their middle age and his hit-the-mark humor transforms Our Country Friends from what could have been heavy-handed caricature to warm and affecting portraits of his characters and their long friendships. This is a comedy of manners, a Berkshire drawing room comedy, but also true-to-life reportage on living through the frights and fears of 2020. Here Sasha stocks up on liquor: ”Deep in the sacristy, [Sasha] Senderovsky picked out an eighteen year-old bottle of something beyond his means, two bottles each of cognac and rye, and, to show his frivolous side, schnapps and a strangle single malt from the Tyrol. The proprietor, a shaggy Anglo with a rosacea nose peeking out from his loosely worn mask, looked very pleased as he rang up the many purchases, his fingers clad in black disposable gloves. ‘Just got a call from the state,’ he said to Senderovsky. ‘They might shut me down any day now as nonessential.’ Senderovsky sighed and bought and extra case of the Riesling and two bottles of an artisanal gin he had never hear of. He could picture Ed pursing his lips and pronouncing it ‘drinkable.’ When the final bill, adding up to just over four digits, meandered out of the machine in many long spurts, Senderovsky’s hand could barely slalom through his signature. A special occasion, he consoled himself.”
Our Country Friends proves once again that Gary Shteyngart is much more than a comic novelist. While Shteyngart populates his novels with superficially stock ethnic characters, he animates each characters with fully independent and universal identities. Our Country Friends is both a fine pandemic novel and also a fine novel. This is the right novel at the right time: 4.5 stars.
Thanks to NetGalley and Random House for providing me with an ARC e-copy.
Sasha hopes to reinvigorate his flagging finances and career by convincing The Actor to collaborate on and collaborate on a script; Vinod hopes to fulfill his long unrequited love for Karen and to launch his unpublished novel; Karen hopes to fascinate Sasha and Masha’s socially awkward and isolated pre-teen daughter Nat; and Ed and The Actor both lust after Dee. Sasha’s inviting The Actor is purely transactional: ”Of course, someone else was coming, too. Someone who was not a friend. Someone who made Senderovsky, already a drinker, drink more.” And Shteyngart conveys why Sasha greets The Actor with mixed emotions: ”I’ve been rereading Odysseus this morning,’ The Actor said. Oh no, Senderovsky thought. ‘I was thinking about my own commonalities with Odysseus.’” All the while, Masha, a psychiatrist, struggles to maintain her now virtual psychiatric practice and to keep the compound COVID-free: ”They force me to be somebody I’m not, Masha thought. They mistake my caring for authoritarianism, and then I have no choice but to become Stalin in an apron. But what option do I have if I’m to keep these cretins from getting sick?” And as Sasha welcomes Vinod to the compound: ”Senderovsky spread out his arms. ‘Can’t hug,’ he said. And, just to warn you, Masha’s gone all epidemiological.’ ‘She is a doctor,’ Vinod said.”.
Our Country Friends feels initially like a too-obvious Chekhovian set-piece. But Shteyngart’s deft characterizations of New York ethnic intellectuals in their middle age and his hit-the-mark humor transforms Our Country Friends from what could have been heavy-handed caricature to warm and affecting portraits of his characters and their long friendships. This is a comedy of manners, a Berkshire drawing room comedy, but also true-to-life reportage on living through the frights and fears of 2020. Here Sasha stocks up on liquor: ”Deep in the sacristy, [Sasha] Senderovsky picked out an eighteen year-old bottle of something beyond his means, two bottles each of cognac and rye, and, to show his frivolous side, schnapps and a strangle single malt from the Tyrol. The proprietor, a shaggy Anglo with a rosacea nose peeking out from his loosely worn mask, looked very pleased as he rang up the many purchases, his fingers clad in black disposable gloves. ‘Just got a call from the state,’ he said to Senderovsky. ‘They might shut me down any day now as nonessential.’ Senderovsky sighed and bought and extra case of the Riesling and two bottles of an artisanal gin he had never hear of. He could picture Ed pursing his lips and pronouncing it ‘drinkable.’ When the final bill, adding up to just over four digits, meandered out of the machine in many long spurts, Senderovsky’s hand could barely slalom through his signature. A special occasion, he consoled himself.”
Our Country Friends proves once again that Gary Shteyngart is much more than a comic novelist. While Shteyngart populates his novels with superficially stock ethnic characters, he animates each characters with fully independent and universal identities. Our Country Friends is both a fine pandemic novel and also a fine novel. This is the right novel at the right time: 4.5 stars.
Thanks to NetGalley and Random House for providing me with an ARC e-copy.
March 2, 2022
This is a book about a group of friends who decide to weather the dilemma together at one of their country estates. While the pandemic rages on around them, they will experience good food, fellowship and even some romance. I realize a lot of you are probably thinking . . . .
But since I am a Boomer and all I could think of was this . . . .
And I was so excited to get my hands on a copy. Unfortunately, that may have been part of the problem with me reading this so wrong. Actually, I should have avoided it simply because I 1-Starred Super Sad True Love Story by this author and should have realized he’s maybe just not for me. But that premise! So enticing! Sadly it was a real snoozefest with characters who all fell flat that I just couldn’t ever truly connect with and a plot that didn’t really even exist. I went in to this thinking it was a story that could practically write itself, but that was not the case.
But since I am a Boomer and all I could think of was this . . . .
And I was so excited to get my hands on a copy. Unfortunately, that may have been part of the problem with me reading this so wrong. Actually, I should have avoided it simply because I 1-Starred Super Sad True Love Story by this author and should have realized he’s maybe just not for me. But that premise! So enticing! Sadly it was a real snoozefest with characters who all fell flat that I just couldn’t ever truly connect with and a plot that didn’t really even exist. I went in to this thinking it was a story that could practically write itself, but that was not the case.
July 22, 2021
This was such a great book with great characters that stay with you long after you finish the book. I laughed and cried as I turned the pages. I love Gary Shteyngart and his books, but this is by far my favorite novel of his. It's about a quirky group of people who quarantine together in a country house. It's about so many things such as sex, racism, adoption, stalking, infatuation, food, immigration etc. In short this is one of my favorite novels. Gary Shteyngart hurry up and write your new book.
November 13, 2021
Shteyngart captures the zeitgeist of 2020 … the pandemic, racial issues, the political split, the immigrant experience, white supremacy, the dangers of social media. There is humor, some absurdity; some satire, some farce. I thought parts were brilliant, other sections I just wanted to skim over.
Is this THE pandemic novel as some tout it? I don’t think so, but it is certainly an important contribution to this body of literature. I recently read another pandemic novel by another noted author which is soon to be released. While Our Country Friends is
more intellectual, worldlier, perhaps wittier and both address the delusional aspects of Covid, I felt the other novel to be much more readable.
Is this THE pandemic novel as some tout it? I don’t think so, but it is certainly an important contribution to this body of literature. I recently read another pandemic novel by another noted author which is soon to be released. While Our Country Friends is
more intellectual, worldlier, perhaps wittier and both address the delusional aspects of Covid, I felt the other novel to be much more readable.
January 14, 2022
This started out slow for me, and to be honest it stayed slow (Shteyngart is generally pretty frenetic) but this was slow in a Tolstoyian/Chekovian way which I like just fine. I ended up adoring this pandemic Uncle Vanya with loving and explicit nods to The Big Chill and in my opinion clear connections to Les Liaisons Dangereuses and the Pedro season of The Real World: San Francisco.
The book centers on a Covid house party of sorts organized by successful, but financially struggling, writer Sasha Senderovsky. (I always assume Shteyngart is writing some aspect of himself in his main characters, but no character in his fiction has seemed so clearly a Shteyngart avatar as Sasha.) Sasha's wife Masha, a psychiatrist, is terrified by and obsessed with Covid. The couple has recently left the city and moved to a rural area near a college town in upstate New York where they have built outbuildings so they can have their city friends surrounding them and avoid rubbing elbows with actual rural people whom they assume are all undereducated, gun-toting, Trump-loving white supremacists. For Covid lockdown they choose to surround themselves with Sasha's three best friends, as well as a writer who studied with Sasha and is currently enjoying some fame for writing a book about being raised poor white trash (see eg Hillbilly Elegy but this author is just a low-key racist, not a right wing propagandist like JD Vance.) Also invited is a famous actor working on a miniseries treatment with Sasha (who I am pretty sure is David Duchovny with a soupcon of James Franco.) Like all of us they assumed lockdown would last for a short time and then realized it was not ending any time soon. There is lots of drama, lots of sex (some gross some not, but all a bit more elemental than I generally enjoy reading about), lots of food and alcohol, lots of weird shifting relationships filled with betrayal and lust and love and reconciliation, lots of analysis of masculinity among ostensibly feminist men, and lots of levels of privilege.
This is a very literary book, in the sense that much of it is essentially a literary salon (until, as they say in The Real World "people stop being polite and start getting real.") This is a very New York book. This is a very Jewish book. This is a very American book. That checks a boatload of boxes for me, but if you have antipathy toward, or simply a lack of interest in, literary Jewish New Yorkers, this is not going to work for you. Also, he really drags the borough in which I reside, so if you love Queens expect to be irked. Extra points for ending in my favorite Filipino restaurant -- he doesn't name it, but I am about 95% sure it is my beloved Jeepney! (Now sadly closed and I sorely miss their banana ribs.) Thanks Gary! A Jeepney memorial is a worthy choice.
The book centers on a Covid house party of sorts organized by successful, but financially struggling, writer Sasha Senderovsky. (I always assume Shteyngart is writing some aspect of himself in his main characters, but no character in his fiction has seemed so clearly a Shteyngart avatar as Sasha.) Sasha's wife Masha, a psychiatrist, is terrified by and obsessed with Covid. The couple has recently left the city and moved to a rural area near a college town in upstate New York where they have built outbuildings so they can have their city friends surrounding them and avoid rubbing elbows with actual rural people whom they assume are all undereducated, gun-toting, Trump-loving white supremacists. For Covid lockdown they choose to surround themselves with Sasha's three best friends, as well as a writer who studied with Sasha and is currently enjoying some fame for writing a book about being raised poor white trash (see eg Hillbilly Elegy but this author is just a low-key racist, not a right wing propagandist like JD Vance.) Also invited is a famous actor working on a miniseries treatment with Sasha (who I am pretty sure is David Duchovny with a soupcon of James Franco.) Like all of us they assumed lockdown would last for a short time and then realized it was not ending any time soon. There is lots of drama, lots of sex (some gross some not, but all a bit more elemental than I generally enjoy reading about), lots of food and alcohol, lots of weird shifting relationships filled with betrayal and lust and love and reconciliation, lots of analysis of masculinity among ostensibly feminist men, and lots of levels of privilege.
This is a very literary book, in the sense that much of it is essentially a literary salon (until, as they say in The Real World "people stop being polite and start getting real.") This is a very New York book. This is a very Jewish book. This is a very American book. That checks a boatload of boxes for me, but if you have antipathy toward, or simply a lack of interest in, literary Jewish New Yorkers, this is not going to work for you. Also, he really drags the borough in which I reside, so if you love Queens expect to be irked. Extra points for ending in my favorite Filipino restaurant -- he doesn't name it, but I am about 95% sure it is my beloved Jeepney! (Now sadly closed and I sorely miss their banana ribs.) Thanks Gary! A Jeepney memorial is a worthy choice.
January 16, 2023
Russians love their rhymes. So we have Sasha, Masha, Natasha, and their dacha.
I always enjoy Gary Shteyngart’s novels. His humor and quirkiness are continually on display.
However, although it starts on a humorous note, this novel is not a comedy or a light read like some of his previous works. It’s a serious character study. Not for people looking for a beach read.
Trigger Warning: You might not want to read this if the suffering caused by the Covid pandemic hits too close to home for you.
At the height of the Covid pandemic, Alexander (“Sasha”) Senderovsky (good pun, that name, yes?) invites some old friends to his country estate/bungalow colony in upstate New York to escape the city and the virus. Senderovsky, a writer and former professor whose career is in a downturn, loves his country “camp” as it recreates the feeling of community he felt in the Catskill bungalow colonies of his childhood. As a Russian immigrant, he felt like an outsider, so a sense of belonging was rare for him. However, the expense of running the place is becoming increasingly burdensome. (I wonder if Senderovsky, with his dressing gown and pretentiousness, is a stand-in for Gary Shteyngart himself; there are certainly similarities. Maybe the author is slyly making fun of himself).
Most of Senderovsky’s friends are also immigrants, from India, Korea, or Russia. There is Karen Cho, a newly rich Korean/American tech entrepreneur; Ed Kim, another Korean/American (a “gentleman”); Vinod Mehta, an Indian immigrant who is a former adjunct professor and short order cook; Dee Cameron, a Southerner, a writer, and Senderovsky’s former writing student. Already in residence are Senderovsky; his wife Masha, a psychiatrist; and their adopted daughter Natasha (“Nat”). Senderovsky has also invited a very famous actor with whom he is writing the script for a TV pilot. Covid is raging and so is a climate of hate everywhere. What could possibly go wrong?
Shteyngart makes no secret of his debt to Chekhov. Vinod reads Chekhov, there are books by Chekhov throughout the house, and towards the end of the book, a performance of Chekhov’s play, “Uncle Vanya”. Even the Dramatis Personae at the book’s beginning owes a debt to Chekhov. It includes “various American villagers”.
Shteyngart uses Chekhov’s formula of putting a bunch of people in a country house and watching the fault lines in their relationships and characters become visible.
We start out thinking this is the ideal country setting, and that Senderovsky has “ a lovely house and a lovely family” as his agent says, but we start seeing the problems soon enough. For one thing, we notice merit being inversely proportional to worldly success. The unnamed man simply called “The Actor” is the most successful, yet he is entitled, self-involved, and seems to spread destruction wherever he goes. By contrast, the humble Vinod, who’s had little worldly success, turns out to be the best of them.
Nat is a precocious, but anxious and hyperactive child. The others show varying degrees of dishonesty, childishness, carelessness, selfishness, and destructiveness, even to those they supposedly care about. One character is told that they should go back to what they’re best at, “manipulating others into despair”. As in Chekhov, the rich are unhappy. Masha tries to be the adult in the room enforcing Covid precautions. She hates playing the role of “Stalin” (as she puts it), but since she’s surrounded by heedless children in adult bodies, it seems she has no choice.
Anyway, although a tragic event occurs, the author does attempt to end on a redemptive note. Life must go on. One surprise is that the one character I found the least likely to change grows profoundly.
I keep lowering my expectations of audio readers, especially when they’re stage and screen actors. Actor Rob Shapiro at least read the text as it was written, which many actors who read audio books don’t do. However, I found his voice a bit too plain vanilla and all-American for the material. Also, he mispronounced many foreign words, reading “Nabokov” as “Nabookoff”; “Beaujolais” as “Boozholay”; “arriviste” as “arriveestee”, “Australasia” as “Australia”, etc. Why are so many people who have difficulty reading working as audiobook narrators?
I always enjoy Gary Shteyngart’s novels. His humor and quirkiness are continually on display.
However, although it starts on a humorous note, this novel is not a comedy or a light read like some of his previous works. It’s a serious character study. Not for people looking for a beach read.
Trigger Warning: You might not want to read this if the suffering caused by the Covid pandemic hits too close to home for you.
At the height of the Covid pandemic, Alexander (“Sasha”) Senderovsky (good pun, that name, yes?) invites some old friends to his country estate/bungalow colony in upstate New York to escape the city and the virus. Senderovsky, a writer and former professor whose career is in a downturn, loves his country “camp” as it recreates the feeling of community he felt in the Catskill bungalow colonies of his childhood. As a Russian immigrant, he felt like an outsider, so a sense of belonging was rare for him. However, the expense of running the place is becoming increasingly burdensome. (I wonder if Senderovsky, with his dressing gown and pretentiousness, is a stand-in for Gary Shteyngart himself; there are certainly similarities. Maybe the author is slyly making fun of himself).
Most of Senderovsky’s friends are also immigrants, from India, Korea, or Russia. There is Karen Cho, a newly rich Korean/American tech entrepreneur; Ed Kim, another Korean/American (a “gentleman”); Vinod Mehta, an Indian immigrant who is a former adjunct professor and short order cook; Dee Cameron, a Southerner, a writer, and Senderovsky’s former writing student. Already in residence are Senderovsky; his wife Masha, a psychiatrist; and their adopted daughter Natasha (“Nat”). Senderovsky has also invited a very famous actor with whom he is writing the script for a TV pilot. Covid is raging and so is a climate of hate everywhere. What could possibly go wrong?
Shteyngart makes no secret of his debt to Chekhov. Vinod reads Chekhov, there are books by Chekhov throughout the house, and towards the end of the book, a performance of Chekhov’s play, “Uncle Vanya”. Even the Dramatis Personae at the book’s beginning owes a debt to Chekhov. It includes “various American villagers”.
Shteyngart uses Chekhov’s formula of putting a bunch of people in a country house and watching the fault lines in their relationships and characters become visible.
We start out thinking this is the ideal country setting, and that Senderovsky has “ a lovely house and a lovely family” as his agent says, but we start seeing the problems soon enough. For one thing, we notice merit being inversely proportional to worldly success. The unnamed man simply called “The Actor” is the most successful, yet he is entitled, self-involved, and seems to spread destruction wherever he goes. By contrast, the humble Vinod, who’s had little worldly success, turns out to be the best of them.
Nat is a precocious, but anxious and hyperactive child. The others show varying degrees of dishonesty, childishness, carelessness, selfishness, and destructiveness, even to those they supposedly care about. One character is told that they should go back to what they’re best at, “manipulating others into despair”. As in Chekhov, the rich are unhappy. Masha tries to be the adult in the room enforcing Covid precautions. She hates playing the role of “Stalin” (as she puts it), but since she’s surrounded by heedless children in adult bodies, it seems she has no choice.
Anyway, although a tragic event occurs, the author does attempt to end on a redemptive note. Life must go on. One surprise is that the one character I found the least likely to change grows profoundly.
I keep lowering my expectations of audio readers, especially when they’re stage and screen actors. Actor Rob Shapiro at least read the text as it was written, which many actors who read audio books don’t do. However, I found his voice a bit too plain vanilla and all-American for the material. Also, he mispronounced many foreign words, reading “Nabokov” as “Nabookoff”; “Beaujolais” as “Boozholay”; “arriviste” as “arriveestee”, “Australasia” as “Australia”, etc. Why are so many people who have difficulty reading working as audiobook narrators?
August 30, 2023
4.5
Uwielbiam książki, w których nie za wiele się dzieje, a moją uwagę podtrzymują emocje wywołane przez czytanie o relacjach. Gary Shteyngart, autor polecany przez Johnatana Safrana Foera i Salmana Rushdiego, właśnie to mi zaserwował w swojej powieści.
Trwa pandemia, sam jej początek kiedy na świecie panuje nerwowa trochę paniczna atmosfera, a ci odpowiedzialni przestrzegają zasad zachowania dystansu. Osiem osób, w tym jedno dziecko wyjeżdża do wiejskiej posiadłości składającej się z kilku domków wczasowych i domu głównego, by tam ukryć się przed pandemicznym niebezpieczeństwem i odbyć nieformalną kwarantannę od zaniepokojonego miasta. Są wśród nich małżeństwa, przyjaciele, niedoszli kochankowie. Pisarze, pisarka, milionerka, aktor, psychiatrka. Mieszkający w Stanach, ale będący imigrantami z Rosji, Korei czy Indii. Siedzą, gadają, jedzą, trochę piją, nic się nie dzieje. Ale tylko pozornie bo oczywiście zamknięci na jednej niedużej przestrzeni, w której zdani są wyłącznie na siebie są skazani na pojawiające się zgrzyty i iskry w relacjach. Jedni się kłócą, a między innymi wybucha namiętność. Jedni się zakochują, inni zdradzają. A my to wszystko obserwujemy z boku widząc dane wydarzenie oczami jego uczestników, a zaraz potem tych, którzy je podglądają z domku obok. I śmiejemy się gdy jest zabawnie, dumamy nad omawianymi kwestiami społecznymi, a potem wspólnie z bohaterami uraniamy łzę.
Uwielbiam dramaty obyczajowe, powieści oparte nie na akcji, a właśnie na relacjach, kipiących emocjach i na świetnie wykreowanych ekscentrycznych postaciach. I jest to przegadane, jest sporo egzaltacji, ale nic nie poradzę na to, że mnie to przeogromnie wciąga i jestem przekonana, że „Nasi przyjaciele na wsi” zostaną mi w głowie na długo. Ach i językowo i stylowo jest doskonale, i nie wiem dlaczego amerykańska książka ma dla mnie jednak bardziej francuski vibe. Polecam wszystkim tym, którzy lubią trochę (pozornej) nudy w literaturze.
Uwielbiam książki, w których nie za wiele się dzieje, a moją uwagę podtrzymują emocje wywołane przez czytanie o relacjach. Gary Shteyngart, autor polecany przez Johnatana Safrana Foera i Salmana Rushdiego, właśnie to mi zaserwował w swojej powieści.
Trwa pandemia, sam jej początek kiedy na świecie panuje nerwowa trochę paniczna atmosfera, a ci odpowiedzialni przestrzegają zasad zachowania dystansu. Osiem osób, w tym jedno dziecko wyjeżdża do wiejskiej posiadłości składającej się z kilku domków wczasowych i domu głównego, by tam ukryć się przed pandemicznym niebezpieczeństwem i odbyć nieformalną kwarantannę od zaniepokojonego miasta. Są wśród nich małżeństwa, przyjaciele, niedoszli kochankowie. Pisarze, pisarka, milionerka, aktor, psychiatrka. Mieszkający w Stanach, ale będący imigrantami z Rosji, Korei czy Indii. Siedzą, gadają, jedzą, trochę piją, nic się nie dzieje. Ale tylko pozornie bo oczywiście zamknięci na jednej niedużej przestrzeni, w której zdani są wyłącznie na siebie są skazani na pojawiające się zgrzyty i iskry w relacjach. Jedni się kłócą, a między innymi wybucha namiętność. Jedni się zakochują, inni zdradzają. A my to wszystko obserwujemy z boku widząc dane wydarzenie oczami jego uczestników, a zaraz potem tych, którzy je podglądają z domku obok. I śmiejemy się gdy jest zabawnie, dumamy nad omawianymi kwestiami społecznymi, a potem wspólnie z bohaterami uraniamy łzę.
Uwielbiam dramaty obyczajowe, powieści oparte nie na akcji, a właśnie na relacjach, kipiących emocjach i na świetnie wykreowanych ekscentrycznych postaciach. I jest to przegadane, jest sporo egzaltacji, ale nic nie poradzę na to, że mnie to przeogromnie wciąga i jestem przekonana, że „Nasi przyjaciele na wsi” zostaną mi w głowie na długo. Ach i językowo i stylowo jest doskonale, i nie wiem dlaczego amerykańska książka ma dla mnie jednak bardziej francuski vibe. Polecam wszystkim tym, którzy lubią trochę (pozornej) nudy w literaturze.
January 12, 2022
Between seeing this novel billed as the start of Covid-19 pandemic literature and a premise which I found irresistible (“eight friends, one country house, four romances and six months in isolation”), I was very keen to read. Sasha Senderovsky is a Russian-born fading literary star who along with his psychiatrist wife, Russian-born Masha, and precocious adopted eight-year-old Korean daughter, Nat, is planning to wait out the pandemic at their Hudson Valley bungalow colony. Joining the Senderovsky’s are Sasha’s two oldest school friends, both second-generation immigrants; hugely successful Korean app developer, Karen Cho, and Indian Vinod Mehta, the unsuccessful nice guy of the group. Making up the party are Karen’s distant cousin, American Korean Ed, and one of Sasha’s brightest students in outspoken and attractive Southern essayist, Dee Cameron. Sasha’s waning literary career has seen him switch to screenwriting and with his future finances resting on a collaboration with a film star known only as The Actor, it is his arrival that dictates the early mood.
Although the book starts and ends with Covid-19 at the forefront, for the bulk of the novel the virus takes a back seat and seems rather incidental, with neither the hosts or guests seeming unduly worried about anything other than themselves. This was a source of frustration for me and it felt very much like Gary Shteyngart never really thought beyond conveniently adding the threat of the virus to the novel as a selling point and failed to actually deliver. Between this there are several romances (some more convincing than others), a burgeoning friendship between Karen and Nat and the discovery of an old betrayal which threatens to divide Sasha from his oldest friends.
By halfway, I was struggling to follow the plot (or lack thereof) and after a decent opening the book lost its way completely with an extensive dream sequence and a denouement that felt oddly twee in comparison to how self-absorbed and unpleasant the characters were for a good eighty percent of this book. To me the characters felt like caricatures that relied mostly on stereotypes of their respective cultures as opposed to real people and made it hard to consider the book as an exploration of friendship and futures in a time of real uncertainty. So much of the humour seemed tied to the fact that Sasha, his wife and his closest friends are all second-generation immigrants to America with Russian, Korean and Indian heritage respectively and as a native Brit the humorous references flew right over my head. I found the entire second half not only a slog to push through but a struggle to follow and one thing I didn’t expect was to be bored rigid by a book lauded as humorous by some many sources. The half-hearted attempt to introduce friction between the white locals and Sasha’s ethnic guests in the second half was eye-rollingly obvious and it was a relief when this book finally limped to a close.
Although the book starts and ends with Covid-19 at the forefront, for the bulk of the novel the virus takes a back seat and seems rather incidental, with neither the hosts or guests seeming unduly worried about anything other than themselves. This was a source of frustration for me and it felt very much like Gary Shteyngart never really thought beyond conveniently adding the threat of the virus to the novel as a selling point and failed to actually deliver. Between this there are several romances (some more convincing than others), a burgeoning friendship between Karen and Nat and the discovery of an old betrayal which threatens to divide Sasha from his oldest friends.
By halfway, I was struggling to follow the plot (or lack thereof) and after a decent opening the book lost its way completely with an extensive dream sequence and a denouement that felt oddly twee in comparison to how self-absorbed and unpleasant the characters were for a good eighty percent of this book. To me the characters felt like caricatures that relied mostly on stereotypes of their respective cultures as opposed to real people and made it hard to consider the book as an exploration of friendship and futures in a time of real uncertainty. So much of the humour seemed tied to the fact that Sasha, his wife and his closest friends are all second-generation immigrants to America with Russian, Korean and Indian heritage respectively and as a native Brit the humorous references flew right over my head. I found the entire second half not only a slog to push through but a struggle to follow and one thing I didn’t expect was to be bored rigid by a book lauded as humorous by some many sources. The half-hearted attempt to introduce friction between the white locals and Sasha’s ethnic guests in the second half was eye-rollingly obvious and it was a relief when this book finally limped to a close.
September 18, 2021
Phew. From the description, I expected this novel to be gripping and fulfill my affection for novels that feature disparate characters and conflict in an isolated setting. I was NOT prepared for this gloriously cathartic and moving story. I was IN it, and it felt so good to shed tears (and laugh) at key points in the plot. So grateful for a novel that is very entertaining and captures the fear, uncertainty, sadness, and hopefulness I think we've all been feeling during this pandemic.
March 24, 2022
This one almost did it ... almost destroyed me. And to think, when I saw this — brand spanking new — at a Seattle bookshop for 60% off back in February, I was overjoyed! I'd been eagerly wanting to read this after seeing the rave reviews in The New York Time Book Review, so I bumped it right to the top of my TBR list ...
Did I mention that this almost destroyed me? By me, I mean my love of books. And the world, possibly, because Putin decided to invade Ukraine while I was just over a week, and 100 pages, in ... Coincidence? The writer's Russian too, though no heir to Dostoevsky, let me tell you. Oh no ...
This was supposed to be light reading. Fun reading. Of course, the subject matter of a book has no bearing on one's ability to get through it, this book is ample proof of that ... You could read "War and Peace" in less time than it took me to get through this one, and have a far better time.
So yes, a war is going on in real-time, you'd think a book with such poorly collected fluff for plot would be a pleasant diversion from that but no, I'd read about the bombing of Kharkiv — a city I spent five years living in — and then turn to this in the evening and somehow feel even worse afterward.
Shteyngart's schtick, I presume — this being the only book of his I've ever read and ever will read — is to make something of current events, so he's spun this painful yarn about a cast of thoroughly dislikeable "friends" all thrown together in lockdown in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic.
"The first fictional account set during Covid-19," they'd said. "How interesting!" I'd thought after hearing the author interviewed on a podcast last year.
It's not, it's really not.
Now I shall strive to avoid any work of fiction set during the pandemic like, well, a plague.
It wasn't the incoherent masking policies that did it for me, nor the Trump-loving morons with their vaccine conspiracy nonsense ... no, it was Shteyngart. Shteyngart has made me, once and for all, disgustingly fed up with the pandemic.
Why did I keep reading? Because this is that worst of books — the sort that doesn't emit its foul odor right away but only reveals the extent of its rot when you're already neck-deep in it. Think of that whole, "frog in boiling water" thing, but with puss and other putrid fluids in place of the water.
Does someone die in the end? Perhaps ... and I can only say it made me think more fondly of the virus as a result. If only it had killed everyone who appeared in this story then the booksellers would have been obligated to move this from the "newly released fiction" to the "inspirational fiction" section.
So there it is, let us be done with it. After six godawful weeks, full of needless suffering at the hands of a cruel tyrant, the time has come to turn to other things. But enough about the experience of reading this.
Did I mention that this almost destroyed me? By me, I mean my love of books. And the world, possibly, because Putin decided to invade Ukraine while I was just over a week, and 100 pages, in ... Coincidence? The writer's Russian too, though no heir to Dostoevsky, let me tell you. Oh no ...
This was supposed to be light reading. Fun reading. Of course, the subject matter of a book has no bearing on one's ability to get through it, this book is ample proof of that ... You could read "War and Peace" in less time than it took me to get through this one, and have a far better time.
So yes, a war is going on in real-time, you'd think a book with such poorly collected fluff for plot would be a pleasant diversion from that but no, I'd read about the bombing of Kharkiv — a city I spent five years living in — and then turn to this in the evening and somehow feel even worse afterward.
Shteyngart's schtick, I presume — this being the only book of his I've ever read and ever will read — is to make something of current events, so he's spun this painful yarn about a cast of thoroughly dislikeable "friends" all thrown together in lockdown in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic.
"The first fictional account set during Covid-19," they'd said. "How interesting!" I'd thought after hearing the author interviewed on a podcast last year.
It's not, it's really not.
Now I shall strive to avoid any work of fiction set during the pandemic like, well, a plague.
It wasn't the incoherent masking policies that did it for me, nor the Trump-loving morons with their vaccine conspiracy nonsense ... no, it was Shteyngart. Shteyngart has made me, once and for all, disgustingly fed up with the pandemic.
Why did I keep reading? Because this is that worst of books — the sort that doesn't emit its foul odor right away but only reveals the extent of its rot when you're already neck-deep in it. Think of that whole, "frog in boiling water" thing, but with puss and other putrid fluids in place of the water.
Does someone die in the end? Perhaps ... and I can only say it made me think more fondly of the virus as a result. If only it had killed everyone who appeared in this story then the booksellers would have been obligated to move this from the "newly released fiction" to the "inspirational fiction" section.
So there it is, let us be done with it. After six godawful weeks, full of needless suffering at the hands of a cruel tyrant, the time has come to turn to other things. But enough about the experience of reading this.
January 10, 2022
I always read Gary Shteyngart with delight and satisfaction. His latest novel provided a rich, spicy and delicious stew of generational immigrant angst and pandemic freak out, all washed down with copious amounts of alcohol.
I have now read three pandemic novels (Burnt Coat and The Sentence were the two previous) and for me these novels have brought me more news than the news. That is why I love fiction so much. Spending hours with characters going through the past two years, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, their own dreams and fears, has brought me great riches of understanding.
Whether of Russian descent, Korean descent, the American South, whether from the worlds of stage, screen, literature, tech, or psychiatry, all these characters come together to shelter in place with their best friends and, in one case, a worst nemesis. Everything that could go wrong does but from this crucible a certain redemption is found.
Helpful hint: it is good to know something about Chekhov's plays before or during reading Our Country Friends.
I have now read three pandemic novels (Burnt Coat and The Sentence were the two previous) and for me these novels have brought me more news than the news. That is why I love fiction so much. Spending hours with characters going through the past two years, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, their own dreams and fears, has brought me great riches of understanding.
Whether of Russian descent, Korean descent, the American South, whether from the worlds of stage, screen, literature, tech, or psychiatry, all these characters come together to shelter in place with their best friends and, in one case, a worst nemesis. Everything that could go wrong does but from this crucible a certain redemption is found.
Helpful hint: it is good to know something about Chekhov's plays before or during reading Our Country Friends.
January 19, 2022
2.5 rounded up
The second of the play-in novels for The Tournament of Books. Similar to The Sentence, this one takes place in the context of Covid and the first year of the pandemic. Shteyngart gives us a group of successful artsy type friends gathering at a country estate a few weeks after the pandemic begins and we follow their fraternal interactions, adulterous melodramas, and past betrayals coming to light as this small group bunkers in for months in hopes of avoiding illness. Although Shteyngart's satirical voice is funny at times, I struggled with his characters, who on the surface should be the most interesting of folks but whose internal thoughts are nothing short of banal and predictable. And unlike the very earnestness and sincerity that Erdrich gave her characters in The Sentence, Shteyngart seems to be mocking his, which sometimes it is earned (the performantive liberalism of this upper middle class types deserves sneering at) but often felt without purpose (what you getting at Gary?). In this sense Erdrich's work may feel more didactic but sometimes trying to be clever and less obvious results in obscuring the point (which is a failing in Our Country Friend).
The second of the play-in novels for The Tournament of Books. Similar to The Sentence, this one takes place in the context of Covid and the first year of the pandemic. Shteyngart gives us a group of successful artsy type friends gathering at a country estate a few weeks after the pandemic begins and we follow their fraternal interactions, adulterous melodramas, and past betrayals coming to light as this small group bunkers in for months in hopes of avoiding illness. Although Shteyngart's satirical voice is funny at times, I struggled with his characters, who on the surface should be the most interesting of folks but whose internal thoughts are nothing short of banal and predictable. And unlike the very earnestness and sincerity that Erdrich gave her characters in The Sentence, Shteyngart seems to be mocking his, which sometimes it is earned (the performantive liberalism of this upper middle class types deserves sneering at) but often felt without purpose (what you getting at Gary?). In this sense Erdrich's work may feel more didactic but sometimes trying to be clever and less obvious results in obscuring the point (which is a failing in Our Country Friend).
Read
November 26, 2021DNF.
I tried. I kept pushing forward, but I just could not finish. In fact, I probably read ⅓ of the story. It does read somewhat like a Russian novel, but it mostly made me grind my teeth in boredom. Shteyngart is one of my favorite contemporary authors, especially Super Sad True Love Story, which was a masterpiece! Lake Success was also compelling. I was ready for yet another pandemic book, but done by an author with a highly original voice. However, I was disappointed. It moved too slowly, and the characters bored me to tears, the plot making my eyes glaze over. What happened? Was it me? I am leaving it unrated, as I admit that I just couldn't engage, but the fault may lie with me.
I tried. I kept pushing forward, but I just could not finish. In fact, I probably read ⅓ of the story. It does read somewhat like a Russian novel, but it mostly made me grind my teeth in boredom. Shteyngart is one of my favorite contemporary authors, especially Super Sad True Love Story, which was a masterpiece! Lake Success was also compelling. I was ready for yet another pandemic book, but done by an author with a highly original voice. However, I was disappointed. It moved too slowly, and the characters bored me to tears, the plot making my eyes glaze over. What happened? Was it me? I am leaving it unrated, as I admit that I just couldn't engage, but the fault may lie with me.
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