I have to say something lucid, articulate, and expressive about the way I felt about Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart. If I achieve these things in my review, it’ll be more than Shteyngart was able to pull off in his book.
I know he was just named one of the next big names in literature, and he’s a nice guy. I’ve met him. He loves New York City, and I do too, and I feel like I am betraying him when I say I hated this book. I hated it from the moment I started reading it. The narrator is whiney, borderline pedophilic, a little stupid, and most criminally, boring. The book is from his point of view, so that should be enough to make this book viewed as a bad book. But, Sheyngart also manages to inject Lenny Abramov, the protagonist, with a withering superiority complex which grates almost immediately. He is consistently droning on about his fear of death, his love of Korean women, and his love of books. All of which he thinks make him better than the America he resides in. He’s behind the times, and by all accounts, he looks terrible and smells even worse.
I never once laughed with the author while reading this book. I wasn’t sure how anything was supposed to be pronounced or perceived. I found Eunice, the Korean love interest, a little endearing, which I’m pretty sure I wasn’t supposed to. She was young and unsure, she has an excuse. Mostly, I thought this book needed someone to take a red pen and make liberal use of it, because I don’t think the idea is bad. Even though it seemed a little Infinite Jest-ey, the idea was pretty good.
This book needed a critical eye from the beginning. Without one, Super Sad True Love Story (a misnomer if ever there was one) became derivative, lazy, and self-indulgent.
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