Told with grand, drunken glee, wild comic strokes straight to the solar plexus, leaving the reader clutching the best and worst parts of childhood, Gary Shteyngart gives us Lenny Abramov; he gives us Eunice Park; he gives us a United States on the brink of foreclosure. The stage is set for an epic romance. Volleying narratives between Lenny’s diary and Eunice’s Global Teens Account (think Instantaneously Instant Messages with techie ornamentation). We learn about Lenny’s fears of dying young, or dying–period–with the opening sentence: “Today I have made a major decision: I am never going to die.” We learn of the open book character, Lenny, his super true love for Eunice, which may or may not be reciprocated. The book is an ode to family, familial obligation, and siblings. It is a lament on the current “values,” an audible scream that if you hold the book just right, you’ll be able to hear.
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