Russian Debutante's Handbook

January 29, 2007
Four years after its initial publication, Shteyngart's debut novel makes its first appearance in an audio version. Strong gamely does his best to capture the antic rhythms of Shteyngart's irrepressible comic novel, but his reading lacks fluency, failing to emulate the book's dry, sardonic wit. More so than most novels, Shteyngart's book depends on the sound of language—immigrants' careful tap dance around a language not entirely their own. While it would perhaps have been too simplistic to have a Russian-sounding voice read this novel, the gamble of having a voice so clearly not Russian results in a competent but unenlightening reading that undersells its source material. Strong sounds too wholesomely American and too white bread to be protagonist Vladimir Girshkin. The result is a reading that lacks a true connection to Shteyngart's work. (Reviews, Apr. 29, 2002)

August 12, 2002
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, New York

Copyright 2002 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 15, 2002
In 1993, communism is just a memory to 25-year-old Vladimir Girshkin, who immigrated to America from Russia as a boy and now holds down a bureaucratic job in a nonprofit immigrant assistance organization. Girshkin, the protagonist of this entertaining, satirical first novel, is caught in his own surreal landscape, which includes his family, his dominatrix girlfriend, and his artsy Tribeca friends. But none of them tops the Fan Man, an elderly, self-professed psychotic Russian whose closest friends are his portable fans and whose sole desire is to become a U.S. citizen. Through the Fan Man, Girshkin is hurtled into an even more surreal scene, the expatriate community of Prava in the Republic of Stolovaya--a fictional Prague--which, as the Paris of the 1990s, attracts a wealthy arts crowd from Europe and North America. It is also prime territory for Russian gangsters, particularly the Fan Man's son, who is the boss of the Russian mob in Prava. Girshkin encounters more misadventures as he finds himself firmly repatriated in both worlds.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2002, American Library Association.)

April 29, 2002
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 proactive—with disastrous results—in 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 Prava—"the 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.