Super Sad True Love Story

The author of two critically acclaimed novels, The Russian Debutante's Handbook and Absurdistan, Gary Shteyngart has risen to the top of the fiction world. Now, in his hilarious and heartfelt new novel, he envisions a deliciously dark tale of America's dysfunctional coming years—and the timeless and tender feelings that just might bring us back from the brink.In a very near future—oh, let's say next Tuesday—a functionally illiterate America is about to collapse. But don't that tell that to poor Lenny Abramov, the thirty-nine-year-old son of an angry Russian immigrant janitor, proud author of what may well be the world's last diary, and less-proud owner of a bald spot shaped like the great state of Ohio. Despite his job at an outfit called Post-Human Services, which attempts to provide immortality for its super-rich clientele, death is clearly stalking this cholesterol-rich morsel of a man. And why shouldn't it? Lenny's from a different century—he totally loves books (or “printed, bound media artifacts,” as they're now known), even though most of his peers find them smelly and annoying. But even more than books, Lenny loves Eunice Park, an impossibly cute and impossibly cruel twenty-four-year-old Korean American woman who just graduated from Elderbird College with a major in Images and a minor in Assertiveness.After meeting Lenny on an extended Roman holiday, blistering Eunice puts that Assertiveness minor to work, teaching our “ancient dork” effective new ways to brush his teeth and making him buy a cottony nonflammable wardrobe. But America proves less flame-resistant than Lenny's new threads. The country is crushed by a credit crisis, riots break out in New York's Central Park, the city's streets are lined with National Guard tanks on every corner, the dollar is so over, and our patient Chinese creditors may just be ready to foreclose on the whole mess. Undeterred, Lenny vows to love both Eunice and his homeland. He's going to convince his fickle new love that in a time without standards or stability, in a world where single people can determine a dating prospect's “hotness” and “sustainability” with the click of a button, in a society where the privileged may live forever but the unfortunate will die all too soon, there is still value in being a real human being.Wildly funny, rich, and humane, Super Sad True Love Story is a knockout novel by a young master, a book in which falling in love just may redeem a planet falling apart.

This was the second book that surprised me this year. I have to admit I have not read his earlier work so when this started making headlines I thought, “what’s up with all the fuss over a love story?’ Of course this is not to knock love stories. There is some that blew me away. The time travelers wife is one.
Super Sad Love Story is a dystopian novel set about 50 years into the future. People get nanotechnology to prevent them from getting old and dying. I thought this bit was a good play on Americans fear of getting old. I mean think about it. We eat a certain way to avoid looking old, we buy special creams at ridiculous prices to reduce signs  of aging and a host of other stuff. This play in the book only illustrates the heights that people will go to to avoid becoming or looking old.
In the book there is also a war in Venezuela that can be read to mean the current war in Afaganstain. The war is becoming increasingly more expensive to pay for and the soldiers don’t always get paid. The not getting paid part is also an excellent way of foreshadowing what might happen. I am not saying that he has a  political axe to grind but it is a brilliant artistic way to show what fiscal responsibility  and wayward cost of war can do.
The most brilliant part or should I say disheartening is the way he portrays America at the edge of fiscal collapse and the world that ensues. People carry these things that sound like a Smartphone but buy the descriptions in the book are more..smartphoney. People can stream their lives and get ratings in everything from Fuckablity to hotness. Which is not so far fetched idea. We are getting close to that now with face book and such.
The author dose a fantastic job of world  building. He constructs things is such a way that it is not to hard to imagine this is what America could look like in the near future. He had the uncanny ability to even make the financial collapse in the book look like it may happen in the next 50 years.
Then there is the love story.
As love stories go this one is not that bad. It just so predictable. When he introduced to characters in the book i could tell what was going to happen. I don’t profess to ne an expert on love stories but when you built the rest of the book up brilliantly at least have a little more substance to the love story or rather love triangle that ensues.
The ending was also a bit of a let down after the rest of the book.
It all ended in a predictable way. I felt that with the build up of the rest of the book it could went out with a bang. It didn’t
Overall this was a book I LOVED. it had it’s short comings but I think all books do.