Customer Reviews

Russian Debutante's Handbook

5 star:		(28)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

The characterization of Vladimir Girshkin is excellent, from how he looks and dresses (which morphs through the book), to how he thinks about himself, his family, his ethniticity, to how he perceives the other Russians and Americans around him. Many humoristic moments as Vladimir, in an effort to get himself out of a dead-end life, gets in with deeper and crazier schemes to extract money and respect from different criminal elements, all the while building (or rebuilding?) the ego inside the man. The characterization, as a trip of self-discovery, is very well written.

But I did find myself forcing to finish. I did end up caring about the characters, esp. Vladimir and Morgan in the end, so I pushed on wanting to see what happened to them. But the plot bogged down, taking turns that made the humourously ludicrous ones in the beginning of the story seem normal. You have to suspend your reality checks for a novel like this, but it just got harder to do toward the end. The clever literary references and play on words at the later half of the novel didn't make me chuckle or think as much as the ones in the beginning.

I will read Mr. Shtenyngart's next novel with anticipation. Writing any novel is hard work, and I'm glad Gary pressed on with number 2.

I was looking for something fresh when I bought this book and it lived up to my expectations for the most part. Shteyngart's first novel is witty and smart. It's like reading the script of a feature-length Seinfeld episode that parodies Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy. The first 100 pages of the novel are hilarious, and there are enough pockets of wit throughout the remaining 350 pages to make it worth finishing, but just barely.

Vladimir, the son of Russian immigrants who disdains his parents' wealth, is a low level clerk at an immigration agency in New York. He lives with chubby Challah, a young woman with low self esteem who makes a living as an S&M slave. Vladimir's character is passive and lacking in ambition, until he meets Fran the lovely daughter of progressive, well-educated parents. When he becomes the token ethnic member of her elite, well-to-do clique, he believes he has achieved the American dream -- until he runs out of money. In his quest for an easy buck, he gets mixed up with the Russian mafia and eventually ends up promoting a pyramid scheme in an old Russian city that has become the proving ground for youths seeking worldly sophistication. This is where the funny, coming of age story about the lovable and self-deprecating Vladimir breaks apart and drifts in several less interesting directions with too many cartoonish characters to follow and care about.

The cover photo of this book was one factor that inticed me to buy it. I can now say the cover is misleading. It portrays a young, twenty-something woman in sunglasses sitting on a sofa in a room that mixes industrialism and contemporary art with shabby antiques. I expected she had some central role in the story, but after finishing the novel, I can't even tell you who the woman in the photograph is. A woman at one of the bars that Vladimir frequents in Prava? Morgan, his last girlfriend? Shteyngart's editor probably decided that a cover with a young woman would sell better than say the photo on the back cover which shows a bearded Russian Jew holding a bear on a leash. That photo also has little to do with the story, but if it had been the cover, I don't think I would have bought the book.

I was recommended this book by a friend of mine. She had already read it, and knowing about my love of Russia and Eastern Europe, figured that it would be up my alley.

As I started the book, I wasn't so sure, but even if the story does become a bit fantastical, it does make for a good read. In Vladimir, Shteyngart does capture something very universal in his sense of not belonging. Of course, Vladimir assumes that most of this has to do with him being a Russian-Jew immigrant to America, and lacking the kind of hard drive and ambition that his mother has that got the family to America in the first place.

When Vladimir gets in too deep with both the finer things and the more base things in American life, he makes it to "Prava" (a slightly fictionalised Prague) of the early 1990's, ostensibly to rip off young American expats whose families have enough money to support the kind of bohemian culture these young people are trying to create there.

However, even though a good number of the Americans there fully fit into Vladimir's picture that he's carefully constructed over the years, it seems that every once in awhile, there are people whom one meets that will not fit at all into that perception. And maybe, just maybe there's a chance for Vladimir to find a place in "American" life.

For me, being able to read a book in English with the "outside looking in" kind of perspective on the craziness of a lot of Americans, without being mean, was quite fun. Also, it was fun to read a story that really does include the world past the borders of the US.

Shtenyngart follows a young man from New York to "Prava," an invented city in Eastern Europe. Our hero is not particularly moral, and gets into many interesting adventures as a result. Masquerading as a highschooler leads him to flee the country and begin a new life of pyramid schemes among a kind of Russian mafia. The book is wonderful because it is different and wholly original. It is a story that has not been told before, and I enjoyed it as such.
However, the book advertises itself to be hilarious, and I rarely found myself laughing and only occasionally smiling. I was amused, but quietly. For me, the book was funny at times but hardly the height of comedy.

This is so N.Y! a wonderful side splitting (albeit long) novel.

The Russian Debutante's Handbook tells the tale of one Vladimir Girshkin, a Russian immigrant with a lot of negative inertia "living", if that's a word you can use for his pathetic existence-in New York. Vladimir is the antithesis of his high powered parents, both energetic if unorthodox and unethical professionals (he a doctor, she an investment banker), for whom, in the traditional Russian way, he loves with unrefined loathing. Plodding along as a lifer immigration clerk, he organizes a phony naturalization ceremony for a "client"-a whacko old man who communes with the otherworld through an electric fan-and suddenly finds himself the beneficiary of the largess of the mans son-a Russian gangster. Shuttled off to a trendy yet depressing eastern European city where the son holds court, Vladimir proceeds to work his way into the Russian gangster life himself-with unfortunate results.

This is a sly, witty farcical send-up of the Russian/Eastern European immigrant experience in these days of eastward EU expansion. Although many of the characters never attain a status much beyond the stage of caricature, Vladimir and his family are wonderfully drawn. The situational comedy is truly superb and the action is faced paced and compelling. Shteyngart has an ear for dialog and a wonderfully droll, sardonic writing style that perfectly matches the farce as it develops.

The book is very funny in an understated sort of way-actually, thinking about it I'd say its vastly amusing rather than funny. You never fall off the bed laughing, rather you find yourself engaged in what seems to be an eternal chuckle.

All in all, an excellent beach/summer time sort of read.

Truly one of the most hilarious books I have ever read! Anyone who has spent time in Eastern Europe will appreciate the Soviet/Post-Soviet era spoofs and will find this book more relevantly humorous than those who haven't visited Russia, although I don't think those lacking first-hand experience with Soviet culture will be disappointed. The faux Leninist speech Vladimir gives to the sausage weilding pensioners tops my list as one of the funniest scenes I have read. Shteyngart's excessive verbosity colors the text with a witty, dry and exaggerated humor that kept me hooked on the book and laughing all the way. I'm looking forward to his next venture.

A Russian immigrant in his twenties, dysfunctional and wallowing in frustrated desires, through circumstance and the realization of his own talents, ends up as a successful con man in an Eastern European country. The novel is intended as a comedic social satire, a coming of age story, and an exploration of the dislocation of the immigrant transitioning between cultures. It works, but not particularly well. What saves it is its sheer ebullience, some very comic scenes and images, and its occasional genuine emotion. Also, its originality in setting and plot. Early in the novel, Vladmir attains a hip, New York girl friend, and moves in with her and her parents. Her parents, in a quiet way, are the funniest part of the book.

A wonderful imaginative well written novel!

While superficial similarities with Foer's "Everything is Illuminated" made me approach this work with some apprehension, I am glad that I picked up this book that offers the reader a mix between "A confederacy of Dunces" and Seinfeld and on top of that an ending that gives this coming of age story a strong backbone.

In his debut Gary Shteyngart offers us a sure footed comedy block buster, that is continuously over the top, yet brimming with powers of observation and literary virtuosity. Through his brushing elbows with the Manhattan upper ten, the greedy site of the American Dream, and the new economy of the former East Block countries Vladimir Girshkin is on a literary roller coaster ride. While some of my fellow reviewers were only mildly enthusiastic, I fail to understand why the words "literary" and "satire" would not belong in the same sentence.

After all the fireworks of hilarity, I really liked the end of the story where the protagonist finally moves in from the outside to live the American Dream. It really helped to put the whole comedy into perspective as an updated hip and hilarious version of the age old "Bildungsroman".

I can't wait to read Shteyngart's next book.