Every time the city of Prava comes up, it's thusly: "Prava, the Paris of the 90s". This tickled me. It is these humorous things that kept me reading. The biznesmenski lunch was another. By the author's descriptions, we know that he knows "of whom he speaks" or writes, in this case.
Another account I couldn't pass up: "The Groundhog kissed Vladimir on both cheeks and then presented his own pock-marked ones. Vladimir closed his eyes and uttered a ridiculous "Mwa!
With the male Eastern European love overture complete, Vladimir was allowed to take his seat. I felt sorry for him the entire book. I also wanted to punch him a few times, but that was taken care of for me. Perhaps it boils down to his mother's "favorite bilingual nickname for him: Failurchka. Little Failure. I didn't hate this book, but I didn't really like it either.
And I kept wishing I was done with it. It's a cheap paperback written like a master. In fact, it's amazingly well-written, and one of the reviewers inside the cover, I think even makes a comment about this author's love for and command of the language. Which makes it all the more disappointing, unfortunately. It gave me some insight into my dad's life as an immigrant to America at age 21 , and there were parts that made me laugh.
View all 6 comments. Feb 11, Eveline Chao rated it it was amazing Shelves: favorites. During adolescence he dreamed of acceptance. In his brief days at college he dreamed of love. And now, with love and acceptance finally in the bag, he dreamed of money. What fresh tortures would await him next? The Groundhog suddenly looked serious. You and Kostya are the future of this organization. I see that now. Before it was fun, sure, run around, blow up a few diners, cut off some dicks, but we got to get serious.
This is the nineties. We're in this. Was being the cornerstone of Prava's elite not enough for them? Did they expect to lead meaningful lives as well? View 1 comment. May 16, Karen rated it liked it. I loved the language in this book - the weird, fresh phrases and the author's obvious fascination with English words, their sound and their usage. The language was enough to carry me pretty far, but I felt that there wasn't much more to this book than that.
The beginning was excellent - when Vladimir is working at a c I loved the language in this book - the weird, fresh phrases and the author's obvious fascination with English words, their sound and their usage. The beginning was excellent - when Vladimir is working at a crappy desk job in New York and miserably failing his Russian-Jewish turned-suburban-Westchesterite parents.
But once he goes to strike it rich in Prava, he pretty much stops being a human being. So sure, a lot of "wacky" and "zany" things happen to Vladimir, and much respect to Gary Shteyngart for actually making stuff up in a fiction book despite having graduated from an MFA program , but sadly I just didn't care about most of it. Aug 17, Mark rated it really liked it Shelves: fiction.
This book was a hoot. Shteyngart has a wonderful sense of the absurd, and his penchant for eccentric characters is the main selling point of this romp in New York and an Eastern European city that has all the chaotic vibrancy and despair of any city emerging from behind the Iron Curtain. Well worth it. May 05, Rebecca rated it did not like it Shelves: weird-or-annoying , reviewed , lit-fic , family , crime , dnf.
I feel like I've been reading a different book toeveryone else?! I was literally forcing myself to read up to certain pages, so in the end I quit. To be honest, I was turned off from the very first nine pages which were full of people saying how good the book was. If the book is so good, why does it need that? Very suspicious I'm so disappointed, I have been want I feel like I've been reading a different book toeveryone else?! I'm so disappointed, I have been wanting to read this book for about 3 years and I finally gave up waiting for the library to buy a copy good call library as it turns out and got one from amazon I wasted my very thinly spread money on such a terrible book, why why why?
Jun 04, shiv rated it it was ok Shelves: fiction. Jan 16, Judy rated it really liked it Shelves: reading-group-pick , 21st-century-fiction. I read Gary Shteyngart's debut novel at fever pitch because I started it late for a reading group discussion. Fever pitch was the correct approach; it matches the pace of the story. In the grand tradition of immigrant novels, Vladimir Girshkin is a young man of Russian descent adrift in a sea of confusion.
He works at an immigrant resettlement agency in New York City, making non-profit wages. His girlfriend is a dominatrix by night, his father is an MC who scams Medicare, and his mother-well I ne I read Gary Shteyngart's debut novel at fever pitch because I started it late for a reading group discussion. His girlfriend is a dominatrix by night, his father is an MC who scams Medicare, and his mother-well I never figured out exactly what it was she did but she was trying to beat the Russian immigrant odds in the s by going straight.
I suppose the novel isn't for everyone. The two reading group members who showed up at the meeting at least tried but "couldn't get into it. The book is part of a huge story called "How I Became an American" fraught with identity crises, family strife, and hilarity. The post-Soviet Union Russian criminal element is well represented but done with heavy sarcasm. A good part of the story is set in Prague, that city's celebrated Baroque soul swamped in the tatters of two world wars and one Cold War.
Shteyngart's Eastern European characters are raised to a level of slapstick often seen in film but rarely in novels. It was not clear to me whether Vladimir actually found himself or love or even a career, but he found safety. Just writing this now it occurs to me that safety is the rarest commodity of all for an immigrant.
Rather than riches or enough to eat or religious freedom, safety is in the end what the displaced person craves most. View 2 comments. A knowledgeable Jew in a similar position expects history to spare any pretense and kick him directly in the face. A Russian Jew knowledgeable or not , however, expects both history and a Russian to kick him in the ass, the face, and every other place where a kick can be reasonably lodged.
Vladimir u "A knowledgeable Russian lazing around in the grass, sniffing clover and munching on boysenberries, expects that at any minute the forces of history will drop by and discreetly kick him in the ass. Vladimir understood this. His take on the matter was: Victim, stop lazing about in the grass.
True to over-the-top Shteyngart form, this book endeavors to take our slovenly hero across several continents, several business enterprises, and several GORGEOUS girlfriends projection much, Gary? In overcoming his timidity and the tightening leash of his overbearing mother, Vladimir finds the courage to leave his demoralizing nonprofit job and pseudo-dominatrix girlfriend Challah for a life with Fran and NYC's plaid-clad hipsterati.
But as the costs of vintage clothing and countless bar tabs start to add up, Vladimir needs money. Like, thousands a month to live as a true hipster you can only imagine just how much I appreciated this section. But, of course, everything goes awry, and slightly rape-ish, and only catapults Vladimir into an even more absurd business enterprise across the Atlantic in "the Paris of the '90s," the diamond-in-the-rough of the former Soviet bloc, Prava.
Shteyngart always knows how to pack a sardonic punch, and this, his first novel, is no exception. With oh so much to love, my criticisms are almost moot. While reading, I sometimes felt as though Shteyngart was beating me over the head or the ass, or the face with Vladimir's feelings of displacement arising from his Russian-Jewish background.
Yes, I realize this is, like, one of THE big points of the whole shebang. But, I occasionally found myself reading pages and pages of reiteration, seemingly just to drive into my puny brain that Vladimir does not belong anywhere. It was all beautifully written, of course, I didn't really mind, but it just seemed to lack the precision of his later works. This whole paragraph just sounds like I'm hatin' on the book for not being Super Sad True Love Story , so feel free to ignore it all.
In short, I have read all of Shteyngart's works at this point, in reverse order, and never once has he disappointed me. His writing is always poignant and insightful, and I look forward to whatever he decides to do next. Jan 31, Jim rated it really liked it Shelves: humor , russia , fiction.
The Russian Debutante's Handbook by Gary Shteyngart is a humorous fantasy about a Russian immigrant who is trying to find himself, and usually finds himself in hot water.
He dreams for something better, but the advice of his friends leads him, on one hand, to Florida, where he infuriates a Catalan mobster by refusing to be his catamite. Then -- on the advice of a highly suspect Russi The Russian Debutante's Handbook by Gary Shteyngart is a humorous fantasy about a Russian immigrant who is trying to find himself, and usually finds himself in hot water.
Then -- on the advice of a highly suspect Russian named Rybakov -- he goes to the Stolovan Republic a kind of generic east European country on the model of the Czech Republic where Rybakov's son, the Groundhog, is in charge of the local rackets. In Prava, capital of Stolovan, Vladimir and the Groundhog set up a highly successful pyramid scheme, until the Groundhog turns on him. In the end, he ends up where I began, in Cleveland, Ohio, married to his American terrorist girlfriend he met in Prava: Downtown Cleveland.
Its three major skyscrapers standing above the cosmopolitan wreckage of factories aching to be nightclubs and chain restaurants; the squat miniskyscrapers that look as if they had been cut short in their prime; the hopeful grandeur of municipal buildings built at a time when the transport of hogs and heifers promised the city a commercial elegance that had expired with the animals But, somehow, this city has persevered against the unkind seasons and the storms that gather speed over Lake Erie.
Somehow, Cleveland has survived, with her grey banner unfurled -- the banner of Archangelsk and Detroit, of Kharkov and Liverpool -- the banner of men and women who would settle the most ignominious parts of the earth, and there, with the hubris born neither of faith nor ideology but biology and longing, bring into the world their whimpering replacements.
Yep, that's Cleveland, all right-- except I don't know about the hogs and heifers. More like car parts and machine tools, but Shteyngart's mostly right. This is a very funny book, but it tends to get goofy in parts. What keeps it worth reading is Shteyngart's wild imagination in depicting the American and the Eastern European scenes. His Vladimir ranges from a schlemiel to a picaro as we progress through his efforts to find a love and a life in a strange land, wherever it may be.
Sep 20, Katrin rated it it was amazing Recommends it for: Most, especially ex-pats. As a former expatriate myself, I found this book to be comforting both in content and style.
Being displaced in a foreign country is very amusing after the initial shock and confusion, the new country's idiosynchrasies clashing with your own. The reverse culture shock in coming back to the U. Aug 06, Corey rated it really liked it Shelves: laughed-out-loud. I found a dusty copy of this book lying unattended to on my mother's bookshelf, sandwiched between Updike and Dickens, believe it or not.
I believe what drew me in was a blurb on the back comparing Shtyngart to Saul Below. Indeed, the plot is analogous to The Adventures of Augie March and in fact, I think there are a couple of allusions to that great novel in Shtyngart's novel , but if you go into this one looking for something akin to the beauty and flawlessness of Bellow's prose, you'll be dis I found a dusty copy of this book lying unattended to on my mother's bookshelf, sandwiched between Updike and Dickens, believe it or not.
Indeed, the plot is analogous to The Adventures of Augie March and in fact, I think there are a couple of allusions to that great novel in Shtyngart's novel , but if you go into this one looking for something akin to the beauty and flawlessness of Bellow's prose, you'll be disappointed, as I was.
The Russian Debutante's Handbook is weighed down by cliches and characters of shallow depth Morgan and Cohen come to mind. That said, a more apt comparison might pit Shtyngart against Gogol. The author, like his Russian predecessor, clearly has a knack for satire, for establishing the absurdity of this world, for mourning a loss of culture, and for warning against getting caught up in feeling superior to it; we're all fools, after all. Maybe I came into this one with the bar set too high, but I do think this is quite an accomplishment for a first novel and I am curious to read his next one.
Aug 07, Hudson rated it really liked it. I bought this for 25 cents at a yard sale, and what a score that was He hits you right away with a barrage of breezy, antic, cutting observations, all cleverly slotted within a breakneck plot. For relief from the pace, the narrator has a wistful and weary side; and there's an undercurrent of geopolitical awareness to also help temper the hype I bought this for 25 cents at a yard sale, and what a score that was For relief from the pace, the narrator has a wistful and weary side; and there's an undercurrent of geopolitical awareness to also help temper the hyperactivity.
The snorty ha-ha renaming of Prague was also not funny to me, and I think he bet a lot of his money on that. Cleverly disguising the Vltava as the Tavlata I don't have that funny bone, I guess.
Jul 06, Julie rated it really liked it Shelves: the-audiobook-commute , around-the-world-in-eighty-books. Four and a half stars. Highly funny, and as for the audiobook, Rider Strong which is an awesome name read it really well. In a part where they hire some DJ for their new super-pretentious dance club where horse tranquilizers are the new cocaine, as he is getting off the plane he yells, "MC Paavo in de haus!!
In de pan-European 'hood! Got de Helsinki beat y'all can't fuck wif! I want to make it my new ring tone. Apr 13, Alan rated it liked it Recommends it for: Strongmen and mountebanks.
The Russian Debutante's Handbook is Gary Shteyngart 's first novel, but the third I encountered—the fourth, actually, if you count his memoir Little Failure. Having now read all of Shteyngart's books to date— Absurdistan and Super Sad True Love Story as well—I can see that this first deep shaft Shteyngart sank into the metaphorical mine of his memory has rougher edges than its successors, but the same manic energy went into its construction.
They're all of a piece, really, these books of his, snaps The Russian Debutante's Handbook is Gary Shteyngart 's first novel, but the third I encountered—the fourth, actually, if you count his memoir Little Failure. They're all of a piece, really, these books of his, snapshots taken from only slightly different perspectives—tragicomic and adolescent, self-deprecating and self-flagellating, witty and absurd, all at least semi-autobiographical stories of a post-Soviet Jewish immigrant to America.
Which is, nu , not so bad a thing after all, you know? With Shteyngart, at least, you know what you're getting At any rate, The Russian Debutante's Handbook was just what I needed at the time, something a little As the novel begins in the summer of , Vladimir is back in New York City, working as a junior clerk for the Emma Lazarus Immigrant Absorption Society, where he provides assistance to more recent and less fortunate Russian immigrants than himself.
Vladimir lives in a cockroach-infested apartment with his girlfriend Challah yes, like the bread , a BDSM professional who is introduced to us on p. A girlfriend whose sickly-sweet incense and musky perfume coated Vladimir's unwashed skin, perhaps to remind him of what he could expect on this, the night of his birthday: Sex.
He is at least serially monogamous, but our little Volodya as Shteyngart notes, the diminutive of "Vladimir" is not "Vlad" tends to see the women in his life more This perspective gets a little tiresome, to put it mildly. But if Vladimir's chauvinism is at all a forgivable obsession—and it's also true that Grishkin is both relatively aware of and self-deprecating about his shortcomings—it's also kinda funny to watch him fumble around every female he meets.
There aren't many outright jokes in The Russian Debutante's Handbook , but there is a fair amount of humor. A few pages farther in, for example, Vladimir and Challah's little apartment gets a visit from a rather aggressive cockroach: The intruder crawled along the crests and ridges of their bed sheets the way a big-rig truck weaves along a mountain highway, then executed a great leap forward into Vladimir's pillow.
It was really something! In Leningrad the roaches were small and lacked initiative. Prava's definitely not Prague, and Stolovaya is definitely not the Czech Republic—Vladimir's destination after some rather entertaining contretemps lead to his abrupt departure from the States bears much more of a relationship to Absurdistan , and never mind that they share no borders in this world or any other.
Prava's most dominant landmark, for example, is the Left Foot, a gigantic sculptured boot that is the last vestige of "the world's tallest statue of Stalin" p. The Foot is an inescapable reminder of Soviet occupation looming over Old Town, and a bone of contention between the Stolovan babushkas and the new biznesmenski —since the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, the country has also become a free-for-all for imported mafiya entrepreneurship, leading to a kind of three-cornered standoff with the more stolid Stolovan old guard and the forces of, you should pardon the expression, Western enlightenment.
Vladimir himself is welcomed warmly by Prava's economic and cultural leaders alike—soon, in fact, it's plain to see that he is the Russian debutante of the title. The fun then becomes My opinion of The Russian Debutante's Handbook was further redeemed at the last minute by its final chapter of the main narrative, that is—there is an Epilogue but it is brief and of no consequence.
The epic chase scene in which this paragraph appears carefully selected to be spoiler-free had me laughing out loud: Nevertheless, the force of the impact steered the Trabant into the railing of the embankment.
The Trabi, knowing a greater physical force when it crashed into one, bounced back into the street, saving Vladimir and his driver from a lapse into the river. A remarkable car, the Trabant! Such shyness and humility, such understated presence. Mother had always wanted Vladimir to marry a girl just like the Trabi. Feb 18, Will rated it it was ok. But, when it came down to it, I found the book and its humor to be pretty flat and tiresome.
From the outset, Shteyngart races from character to character, setting to setting, irreverently poking fun at stereotypes while at the same time reinforcing them. And, while his satirizations are often valid, and his writing clever, the book feels tedious and smug as a result of them.
Hipster Americans living in Prague? Ex-Soviet state gangsters? Wealthy, liberal New Yorkers? These are easy targets that Shteyngart really beats into the ground. Shteyngart is keenly aware of the legacy of immigrant fiction, and its default message. The protagonists, as expatriots of their birth country, can no longer identify with their home culture and people.
Alternatively, however, as new members to a foreign society, they are not wholly assimilated, and remain on the boundaries of its culture—both foreign and familiar. Shteygart recognizes this tradition while at the same time using it as a means to tease both Russia his birth country and America his immigrant home.
Historically, a little dangerous, but, for the most part, nicely tamed by Coca-Cola, blue-light specials, and the prospect of a quick pee during commercial breaks And, thus, as with everything else, he makes fun of it. There is a decent amount of Lenny Abramov in Vladimir Girshkin. He is meek, insecure, and well-read.
But, while Lenny is somewhat endearing, and soft, Vladimir is cruel and vindictive. He indiscriminately scams, uses, and lies to everyone, propelled by a feeling that he is owed something from the world by his in-between status.
You would be hard-pressed to count all of the exclamation points Shteyngart uses. But, in the end, this energy—while enough to carry the reader through the book—feels stagnant and hollow. Sep 26, Octo rated it really liked it Shelves: dunread. I think I might have enjoyed this book far less had I not been thrown into the former U. This book deals with all that interests me so much in that community - the courage to immigrate in the first place, the idealized American dream, the social disconnect that exists once immigrants arrive, the longing for for home, the misunderstanding of america, and the ultimate american question - what do you do when Hmm This book deals with all that interests me so much in that community - the courage to immigrate in the first place, the idealized American dream, the social disconnect that exists once immigrants arrive, the longing for for home, the misunderstanding of america, and the ultimate american question - what do you do when you're down and out?
But we're presented with more than just that in this book. There are all these crazy liberal artsy Americans heading to prague and forming their own little society there.
Hell, they even pretend to understand, and actually act upon, social disconnects left by the disintegration of the USSR. The cold war was won, and people on both sides are fooled by the winner's propaganda - and they're prepared to act. Other plusses include highlighting differences between what we americans usually generically refer to as 'russians' and the bitter hatred and disconnect between segments of them, clearly illustrating the slippery slope created when one's morals are compromised, and genuinely funny depictions of eastern european immigrants in america and american 20 somethings in prague.
My ultimate credo: A story becomes literature when it transcends its genre. When it can seduce almost any reader, regardless of its plot, because the characters are so well crafted, the writing is seamlessly poetic, and nimble comedy keeps any tragedy from taking itself too seriously.
Shteyngart's novel exceeds these expectations, having entranced a reader who previously found every mafia tale she'd ever encountered supremely nauseating. While a few classic features of mobster fiction can be fou My ultimate credo: A story becomes literature when it transcends its genre. While a few classic features of mobster fiction can be found scattered among the jokes, the twists, and the multi-cultural philosophy, there is no bitter after-taste of a formula having been followed.
Instead there is the sensation of satisfaction from knowing you've just been converted. Absurdity is quickly revealed as the writer's greatest strength and with it he exhibits the importance not of a protagonist with whom we must completely identify but of one who ballet dances along the razor's edge between amusing and annoying, sympathetic and selfish. When you find yourself willing to fight tooth and nail for an admitted semi-idiot who just ten pages ago was committing crimes all too familiar to you from the receiving end, and ten pages earlier had your bottom lip quivering over his Muppet-like fears of the big bad world, you know he's become family to you.
And you're not letting that book go anywhere. Oct 25, Janice rated it did not like it. Jan 21, robin friedman rated it liked it. Among the many writers included in the book is Gary Shteyngart b. At the age of seven, Shteyngart immigrated to the United States with his family from Leningrad. His essay "The Mother Tongue between Two Slices of Rye" appears in the Library of America anthology and shows a writer with some nostalgia for the Soviet Russia of his childhood, especially for the Russian language.
The LOA introduction to the essay quotes Shteyngart as saying that childhood in Soviet Leningrad "only became horrible once you were an adult. In the essay, Shteyngart notes the partially autobiographical character of the novel, especially as it involves the main character's, Vladimir Girshkin, thinking, dreaming, fearing, and counting money in his native Russian.
It is in its entirety iconoclastic, irreverent, caustic, and debunking in tone. The book is far too long and the scenes and characters tend toward both the stereotyped and implausible. It is manically written, on overdrive or on loud almost without pause. I grew impatient with this book. More, I disliked it. The characters in the book and the conflicting cultures, American and Russian, with which it deals are portrayed as amoral with everyone in search only of material success and the main chance.
The novel tells the story of the young Vladimir Girshkin who immigrated from Russia with his parents, a successful doctor and lawyer, in as part of a Carter administration initiative to allow Russian Jews to immigrate in exchange for American grain to alleviate a severe food shortage. Vladimir was awkward, out of place, and uncomfortable with people both in his native Russia and in the United States.
He is the quintessential and stereotyped outsider. Vladimir's mother is overprotective and wants her son to succeed as a lawyer. Citizenship rejected. He wants Vladimir to help him get citizenship.
At the time, Vladimir is living with a young overweight dominatrix named Challa. He jettisons Challa for an upscale New York woman, the daughter of two prominent academics. Vladimir hopes his relationship with this woman will help ease his loneliness and pervasive alienation and help him find his place in American life. In search of money, Vladimir engages in a pair of highly questionable schemes and most flee the United States for his life.
The novel is in two parts. The first part, sketched above in the briefest terms, takes place in New York while the second takes place in Prada Prague in its days as a cultural mecca and as a home for American and European young people. When Vladimir flees, he takes a job in the Russian mafia arranged by the fan-man whom Vladimir has defrauded by arranging for him a phony naturalization ceremony. Ultimately, of course, the truth will out.
The enterprising Vladimir plans a Ponzi scheme -- a term and technique used by a relative and related to him by his mother -- on the wealthy and superficial Americans lounging about Prada pretending to be writers and bohemians. Prada remains under the shadow of the Soviet Union as shown by a large statue of Stalin and his feet. Vladimir falls in love with a woman named Morgan, from a small town in Ohio.
At first blush, Morgan appears to be the wholesome American girl, well-to-do, happy with her life, a basketball player, and spending a brief time in Prada before going home to settle down. Vladimir sees in her the acceptance as an American and the home that he craves.
The Russian mafioso boss ultimately discovers how Vladimir cheated his father. Beaten within an inch of his life, Vladimir escapes from Russia to return to Ohio and America and the stereotypical American life of success that has been mocked, ridiculed, and envied throughout the book. The book tells the story of the archetypical loner or schlemel who does not fit anywhere well. The tone towards the character is a mix of mockery and sympathy. Through Vladimir's perspective, the book offers a sharp, negative view of late 20th Century life, both in the communist world and in America.
Far from glorifying the Russian mob or communism, Vladimir still seems to feel for most of the novel more at home in Prada than in America. The result is a reading that lacks a true connection to Shteyngart's work.
Reviews, Apr. Apple Books Preview. Publisher Description. More Books by Gary Shteyngart. Our Country Friends. Super Sad True Love Story. Lake Success. Little Failure.
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