This is a social satire by the great, great grandson of Gogol! It is set in the near future in a non-literary, ahistorical, ultra-capitalist society where people are obsessed by material things and death, or avoiding it. Shteyngart celebrates the value in still being a human being.

Simply excellent! The satiric description of” future” culture is so on point that it reads like a creepily accurate prophecy. Personal devices that rates your popularity? You mean Facebook on your iPhone? Check. People camping out and protesting while the governments try to shut it down? You mean Occupy? Check. Economic crisis in the US of A and bad credit rating? Wait … that’s just news! Super Delightful Almost Real Life Story.

I liked this novel, but not nearly as much as I liked Absurdistan. The premise is just far enough out there to be satirical, and yet written well enough that I can believe this future isn't that far off. Most of the characters are hard to like at some point or another in the novel, and the way that Eunice uses Lenny is kind of sickening, but overall it is an entertaining read.

<p>It's odd how many people call this novel satirical or futuristic. It is set in a NYC in which everyone has their nose buried continually in a smartphone, in which the economy is in free fall, and in which protestors are camped in the parks. Hello? This is journalism. Shteyngart caricatures just enough to startle one awake.</p> <p>This is not to say that he doesn't have a sharp eye. The story suggests that internet pornography and online shopping are what educate young people, and that old books' musty smell offends people who read only off screens.</p> <p>If the book has a fault, it is that Shteyngart writes the love story of a Russian Jew and a Korean as if there were a Russian and a Korean national character. I don't know if that can possibly make sense. Still, if an error, it is an affectionate error. He appears to like both peoples for their toughness, stubbornness, and family loyalty.</p> <p>All the above is the sideshow, though a very flashy, upbeat, entertaining sideshow. The main event, what the book is about, is that everything dies: parents, countries, our own dirty, dear New York City. You. Me. Love. It's about how to take that.</p>

I really don't want to read about some white, males mid-life crisis. Not to mention that I felt the text and description of Eunice Park was extremely racist.

An entertaining novel, yet, as its title suggests, sad. Set in an alternate, near-future New York, it follows the relationship of middle-aged Lenny, son of Russian Jewish immigrants, and early-20s Eunice, daughter of Korean immigrants. He doesn't want to die, ever, and she hasn't yet learned how to live. The story is told in chapters that alternate between Lenny's diary entries and extracts from Eunice's online messages to and from her friends and family. They live in a world where everyone is online, all the time, through smartphone descendents known as äppäräti, constantly ranking everyone they meet or even pass by. Corporations are more important than nations and the U.S. is on the verge of defaulting on its loans to foreign lenders. Lenny and Eunice are both flawed characters, so they're hard to warm up to, although they're both quite clever. The writing is engaging and witty, but the characters are so wrapped up in their miseries and misunderstandings of each other that the story is depressing. The humour is nice, but the perspective is a bit bleak.

In essence, this is a Woody Allen movie with an updated backdrop. It is about a neurotic Jewish man in New York city endlessly obsessing about his aging, his mortality, his ugliness, his parents, his money, his girlfriend's youth, her good looks, etc, etc. He is joyless; she's cheerless and confused about things. The backdrop to the story is a rapidly imploding USA, with ramifications far more interesting than the main characters. Like a Woody Allen movie, satire, humour and absurdity intersperse all the gloom. If you enjoy navel-gazing and are obsessed with death and the grayness of life then this book is for you.

This one has stuck with me more than I thought it would, maybe because I had just been to New York and could relate to the physical setting. But I enjoyed the characters (although they're not completely likable) and the near-future dystopian theme. It's scary to think that in the future all jobs might be in either Retail, Credit, or Media--but that might not be so far-fetched.

I heard about this book through an interview with author Gary Shteyngart on CBC Radio One's *Spark* (full interview available here: http://www.cbc.ca/spark/2010/09/full-interview-gary-shteyngart/). I’d never read any of Shteyngart’s work previously, but he came off sounding witty and kind and darned if the premise of *Super Sad True Love Story* didn’t have me hooked. *Super Sad True Love Story* is partly about a fraught, unlikely May-December relationship. It is also partly about the rotten, self-consuming implosion of the American empire. Shteyngart sets his novel in the near future. As near as I can tell, Shteyngart composed this future by taking all the most insane social, technological and political trends currently unfolding and following them to satirized versions of their logical conclusions. Just as America reaches the point where immortal youth seems within grasp, the Chinese come calling on the Federal debt, and the entire delicate structure resting on post-recession overspending comes tumbling in on itself. Middle-aged Lenny and young, beautiful Eunice form an unlikely bond over shared, 2nd-generation, middle-class miseries (some laughable, some quite real) and as the world around them unravels, the bond between them also suffers. Will they make it through the Rupture? I won’t tell you that, so you’ll have to read it yourself. Don’t worry. It’s hilarious! No, I’m not kidding. It really is funny, and it’s a testament to Shteyngart’s talent that one book can be a fast-paced, over-the-top, trendy sci-fi romp; a really touching love story; and maybe the most buckyballs-out scatological thing I’ve read this year (which is saying something – I also read *Lord Vishnu’s Love Handles* in the past month). All in all, I’d recommend this to any fans of Douglas Coupland, Cory Doctorow or even any fans of *The Daily Show* or *The Colbert Report* (the satire here is of the same pitch). This book will almost certainly make my top 5 list for 2011.

Not for the faint-hearted. This novel is hilariously spot on with cultural references. But the futuristic setting is at times cruel and bawdy. Still it has a way of being a sweet love story as well.