Russian Debutante's Handbook (Shteyngart) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
The "Russian debutante" in Gary Shteyngart's very funny, very deft first novel is one Vladimir Girshkin, a feckless 25-year-old Russian-American who...[is] trying to cope with the confusions of life in America of the 1990's and the incessant demands of an ambitious and endlessly aggrieved mother.... Mr. Shteyngart tells the uproarious and highly entertaining story of how Vladimir journeys from St. Petersburg to Scarsdale and back to Eastern Europe.... And the people Vladimir meets along the way are sketched with an equally wicked and comic hand.... [helping] the very talented Mr. Shteyngart expose the absurdities that exist on either side of the former iron curtain.
Michikio Kakutani - New York Times 


Gary Shteyngart ... has produced a sardonic,moving and ingeniously crafted update of earlier sagas of upward-struggling American newcomers.
Washington Post


[A] terrifically charming tale of a young Russian immigrant's capitalist and carnal aspirations.
Vanity Fair


This picaresque debut...transcends its personal genesis to become an all-around great American story.
New York Time Out


The rampaging narrative is festooned on every page with glitering one-liners,improbably apt similes and other miniature pleasures.
Elle


Orwell once remarked that the narrator of Tropic of Cancer was so far from endeavoring to influence the future, he simply lies down and lets things happen to him. Shteyngart, whose sensibility is allied with Miller's, takes a passive character, Vladimir Girshkin, and makes him briefly proactivewith disastrous resultsin his smart debut novel. Vladimir is the son of immigrants who came to the U.S. via a Carter administration swap (American wheat for Russian Jews); his father, a doctor prone to dreams of suicide and complicated medical schemes, and his mother, an entrepreneur who makes fun of her son's gait, give him the inestimable gift of alienation. In true slacker fashion, Vladimir, at 25, is wasting his expensive education clerking at the Emma Lazarus Immigration Absorption Society. A client, Rybakov, bribes Vladimir to get him American citizenship, confiding that his son, the Groundhog, is a leading businessman (in prostitutes and drugs) in Pravathe Paris of the nineties in the fictional Republika Stolovaya. Vladimir fakes a citizenship ceremony for Rybakov in order to curry favor with the Groundhog. Then, because he has unwisely repelled the sexual advances of crime boss Jordi while trying to make some illicit bucks to keep his girlfriend, Francesca, in squid and sake dinners in Manhattan, Vladimir leaves abruptly for Prava. Once there, and backed by the Groundhog, Vladimir embarks on a scheme to fleece the American students who have flocked to Prava's legendary scene. Although the satire on the expatriate American community is a little too easy, Shteyngart's Vladimir remains an impressive piece of work, an amoral buffoon who energizes this remarkably mature work.
Publishers Weekly


Failurchka Mother's Little Failure is what Vladimir Girshkin's overweening Russian immigrant mother calls her 25-year-old son at the beginning of this picaresque, episodic, and somewhat sprawling first novel. Vladimir is stuck in a dead-end job and saddled with girlfriend Challah, "queen of everything musky and mammal-like." Then through a series of chance encounters, he is catapulted to the eastern European city of "Prava" to find himself welcomed into the fold of powerful Mafiosi. Shteyngart introduces a large cast of exotic characters, mainly twentysomethings meandering from adventure to adventure. Yet this distinctive new voice, which is both richly ironic and often side-splittingly funny, still seems to be seeking the right register. The relentless humor and satire obscure the development of character that is necessary to make readers believe the cast is real and not just being staged. Moreover, one wonders why the author felt the need to (thinly) disguise Prague (Prava) with its river Tavlata (Vltava) and the 1969 (1968) Soviet invasion. Thus, his highly imaginative but at times maddening panorama comes to resemble a dazzling Potemkin village. Though this is not an experimental novel, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the author is still experimenting with a very large talent he's not entirely sure what to do with. But having gotten a taste, we will eagerly await his next offering, in which less just might be more. Recommended for all literary collections and larger public libraries. —Edward Cone
Library Journal


This moving and funny debut novel offers a fresh take on the oft-told story of the immigrant longing for an authentic sense of place.... This is a complex and impressive work, full of humanistic touches and worldly humor.
Book Magazine


First-novelist Shteyngart casts a cold eye alike on Clinton-era aimlessness and free-enterprise excess in Eastern Europe. It's Vladimir Girshkin's 25th birthday in 1993, and his mother wastes no time reminding him that he's a disappointment. Since the family arrived in New York from the USSR 13 years before, she's become a successful businesswoman, while Dr. Girshkin adds to their coffers by defrauding Medicare. But Vladimir has dropped out of a progressive midwestern college to take a job at the Emma Lazarus Society helping new immigrants. One of them, the decidedly crazy Mr. Rybakov, wants to get Vladimir in touch with his son Groundhog, a mafioso operating in Prava, "the Paris of the '90s," an imaginary Eastern European city transformed by the collapse of communism into a mecca for criminals and novelty-seeking Americans. At first, Vladimir prefers to hang around the trendier sections of Manhattan, exchanging grad-student babble with the crowd gathered around girlfriend Francesca. But a misadventure in Miami with an amorous drug-dealer makes it advisable for him to get out of town, so Vladimir heads for Prava, where he persuades Groundhog to fund a Ponzi scheme based on getting American expatriates to invest in a literary magazine. Heavy drinking, observations about the void after communism, and a new girlfriend await Vladimir before his bamboozling comes to light and he must once again flee vengeful mafiosi. A sardonic but surprisingly moving epilogue finds him five years later in Cleveland, working at his father-in-law's insurance company, thinking wistfully of the days when he lived "foolishly, imperially, ecstatically" in the Wild West of Eastern Europe. Himself a Leningrad-bornAmerican citizen, Shteyngart mercilessly exposes the moral ambiguities of late-20th-century life under whatever form of government. Though slightly chilly toward its large cast of characters, the novel is redeemed by its thematic sweep and Vladimir's engaging brio. Ambitious, funny, intelligent, in love with irony and literary allusions, as if by a lighter Nabokov.
Kirkus Reviews