BOOK REVIEW

Super Sad True Love Story

By Gary Shteyngart

First of all, Gary Shteyngart is one of my favorite authors. If you haven't read Absurdistan or The Russian Debutante's Handbook, I would highly recommend doing so. His writing is humorous and gross and weird, but overall it's just really good.

Super Sad True Love Story, like Gary's previous novels, follows a young(-ish) Jewish guy, Lenny, on his quest to win the heart of a much younger and damaged woman - Eunice. Meanwhile the United States is literally collapsing around them and they are having to fight for survival.

In their dystopian world, people have to rely on technology as a means of communication and networking so much that when people actually speak face to face, they call it "verballing" and it is a foreign and strange occurrence. Super Sad goes back and forth between Lenny's e-mails and journal entries and Eunice's e-mail and chat accounts - never is there a conversation observed that is not through these means.

It's a dark story, but this book made me laugh a lot. It reads lightly, and it made an excellent pool read, but it is not vapid. It serves as a nice commentary on the government over governing, and our increased reliance on technology to communicate effectively. It also feels like a very relevant read, as the US is collapsing due to bankruptcy and their inability to pay off their loans to China. UH OH.

Here's a (funny! real funny.) promotional video for this book and the author:
So, yeah. Check it out from the library, buy it on Amazon, or you local bookstore. Two thumbs up.

Read more about Gary Shteyngart here.

Tangent

Isn't it funny that no matter when you go to Kroger you ALWAYS SEE PEOPLE YOU KNOW?? I took a "nap" and woke up at 10pm and my inner dialogue went like this:
me 1: "girl, get out of bed brush your hair and go buy some groceries."
me 2: "but I could skip dinner and just sleep... or I could eat flax seeds and green tea..."
me 1: "stop bitching and go buy groceries."
So I did. And I even put on a little mascara. And as I was leaving I was thinking that my chances of running in to people I know are pretty slim, seeing as it's 10:15 on a Saturday night. To further decrease my chances of awkward run-ins, I even chose the east-side Krogs.

And then I ran in to this girl who I used to work with in Madison, who once or twice supplied an under-21 me with over-21 libations and used to tell me about all the old men she had slept with. Only now she's dating our old boss. (To be fair, he's really nice and pretty cute.) And it was awkward because for some reason I feel like I need to explain what I'm doing with my life, like people just assume I'm flailing and floundering unless I tell them what I'm actually up to, which is mostly flailing and floundering. And hopping fences to go swimming. Not that me giving a life update is necessarily awkward. It's just that I always have to give them to people who don't care. This poor girl was just trying to do something normal, like buy some milk, and I verbal vomited all over her. Like she had even wondered what I had been up to in the last two years.

Finally she peeled herself away from me. I check my cell phone like a nervous tick: no new messages. I go home to my house, deserted except for Moof, and turn on Sex and the City reruns, and proceed to eat about half of the food I had just bought. Craving attention, I consider texting people who reliably text me back, but realize how sad that is and talk to the cat instead. Sex and the City goes off, should I watch Teen Mom, or go to bed? I turn on Teen Mom, feeling too lazy to walk upstairs, and then promptly turn it off when the teen couple starts arguing over who will buy their son's first birthday cake.

Speaking of cake, I witnessed a Family Doing A Family Thing while in Krogs: picking out a cake. The bakery was closed, so they were studying the leftover cakes in the cake case, while their teenaged son tries to look nonchalant and pretend like he's too cool to be looking at cakes with his fam but still trying to not look annoyed or embarassed even though he totally is. Meanwhile I'm trying to look cool and nonchalant checking out some fresh bread that I am never going to buy even though I'm really just spying on this Family Doing A Family Thing. It makes me miss my family. How fun it is to have a little brother going into his angsty phase! How I miss hearing him talk on the phone for hours and hours and hours. I miss embarassing him about his girlfriend.

Moral of this story: Always brush your hair before going to Kroger.

Now I'm off to internet-stalk Andy Samberg. Good night.