Friday, May 6, 2011

Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart

Super Sad True Love Story is set years about a half century in the future. The world is a intense adaptation of aspects of the world today. America has been condensed to three industries (Credit -- where men aspire to work, Retail -- where women aspire to work, and Media -- which is largely reality TV). Everyone carries around a social networking device and spends most of their time social networking, ranking each other, shopping on line, etc. Occasionally they take a break from this to actually verbally talk with a friend.

Set against this background, the novel tells a love story in chapters that swap between Lenny Abramov, a Jewish scholar, and emails and chats from his Korean girlfriend, Eunice Park. Both narrators are rather unreliable and the story moves along believably, as the world around them falls to pieces and the expected triangle in their relationship forms.

The writing is amusing and astoundingly inventive the plot is respectably sufficient that keeps you interested from beginning to end.

3 Stars

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