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23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Some clever wordplay, but in need of an editor, March 12, 2005
Gary Steyngart is an obviously talented writer, as this debut novel proves. Let me be more precise: Shteyngart is gifted with words and imagery and phrasing, but less so when it comes to plot and pacing and characterization. Vladimir Girshkin, our erstwhile hero, is a walking contradiction -- a thoroughly unpleasant and unsympathetic character who will undoubtedly frustrate most readers by consistently acting in inconsistent and unpredictable fashion. The rest of the characters we encounter merely fumble through the proceedings as cardboard cutout-stereotypes; others (luckier ones?) simply disappear without a trace (sadly, it is the more interesting characters who vanish, leaving us with the dross).
Again, Shteyngart has a real flair for language, and there are some moments that will inspire true laughter in most readers. But at 470+ pages, this book is simply too long for its own good; Shteyngart can't sustain the hilarity, the plot wanders, the focus blurs, and at least 150 pages should have been cut. With a sloppily constructed plot riddled with holes, a host of inaccuracies that a watchful editor would have doubtless corrected (bones in chicken Kiev??), and a thoroughly unsatisfying conclusion, this is an interesting, but incredibly overrated, novel. Quite simply, this is not the great masterpiece that the cover blurbs would have you believe.
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25 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Many in-jokes, picaresque Mafia Portnoy's Complaint..., January 1, 2005
I read this for the section dealing with expatriates in Prague-- here called "Prava." If you spent any time there in the nineties, you'll see a lot of in-jokes and satire that may cause you to chuckle-- the Prague Post here named Prava-dence, Cafe Radost called Joy, and so on.
But in truth that section is not what the book is "about" (nor is there a lot of detail about it)-- it's a comic/dark fantasy coming-of-age that takes on America, Russia, Central Europe-- none of it terribly deeply. It's sort of a Russian Philip Roth-- Girshkin's ruminations on women and sex take up a lot of the book and they are remarkably unerotic; sex seems to be all animal smells and bodily fulids.
The story of an American/Russian boy (Like the author, the protagonist moved to America as a child) who for complicated reasons ends up in Central Europe as an entrepreneurial mafioso is episodic, wordy, intermittently funny but ultimately oddly uninvolving.
This got ecstatic reviews and awards when it came out, and there's no doubt that Shteyngart writes well, but the comparisons to Waugh are misplaced. Waugh was concise-- Shteyngart goes on, and on, and on. This book would be a lot more fun if it were a solid 150 pages shorter.
As it is, had I not been interested in the Prague satire, I think i'd have stopped reading-- this kind of blood-and-semen boy-into-man comedy is not something I usually enjoy.
Like Philip Roth, whose Portnoy's Complaint is so well written but kind of gross, I will keep an eye on Shteyngart and read him again. If you like that kind of story, you'll like this too.
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34 of 41 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Utterly original and infused with comic lunacy, December 24, 2002
Gary Shteyngart has written a great first novel, filled with idiosyncratic characters and their over-the-top experiences. With the Russian Debutante's Handbook, he has established himself as a master of social critique and comic lunacy. One of the beauties of this novel is how it skillfully juxtaposes two worlds. The first half of the novel explores the peculiarities of New York City through the eyes of Vladimir Gershkin, an immigrant Russian Jew working as an assimilation facilitator at an immigrant absorption clinic. The second half of the novel follows our hero to the loosely-fictitious eastern European city of Prava, bubbling with the onset of capitalism and infused with comic relief by the budding expat community. Shteyngart, himself a Russian immigrant, ideally trained by his own experience and uniquely equipped with a gift for observation and expression, exposes the hilarious quirks of each world and pokes sharply yet playfully at their shortcomings. Much has been said about Shteyngart's gift for language. It is not an exaggeration to say that one could literally open this book to any page and find an utterly original turn of phrase, or a combination of words that beg you to stop and ponder. This is a truly fresh voice in the literary world.
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