Super Sad True Love Story: A Novel by Gary Shteyngart

You would think I would have learned by now that it is Terry Gross' job to make books sound good when she interviews the author on her show Fresh Air. As I was listening, I thought Super Sad True Love Story sounded a little too far fetched for me, but it did not stop me from picking it up at a recent trip to Powell's Books. I am glad I read it, but what others see as great satire, I thought was an author trying way too hard. The line between poignant and absurd is thin and I would rather stay in the side of poignant.

In Gary Shteyngart's futuristic New York, the dollar has been been replaced by the Chinese yuan as the currency of choice, American has been reduced to a one party police state that is always on high security alert, and people are constantly judged by their credit score and their hottness or f-ability rating. Lenny Abramov is the middle-aged protagonist with a good credit score, but an embarrassingly low Male Hotness rating. He has fallen in love with the very young Eunice Park, who's hottness score helps boost Lenny's just by standing next to him. Lenny works for the Post-Human Services division of the Staatling-Wapachung Corporation, selling people eternal life, and while he would also like to live for ever, his love for Eunice takes over his ambitions. Just as Lenny seems to be getting things together the US experiences a "rupture" and is taken over by the world's economic powers and split up Berlin style post WW II.

As I said earlier, the book is funny, but Shteyngart takes everything to the extreme. A little more subtlety would have made this book much more readable.