The Russian Debutante's Handbook

In his usual wry fashion, Gary Shteyngart delivers a captivating transcontinental adventure filled to the brim with his unique blend of sardonic and self-deprecating wit. Giving a detailed and often hilarious depiction of immigrants and expatriates, with a few solid jabs at privileged Americans, Shteyngart is at the height of his powers as postmodern provocateur.

http://wineandabook.com/2011/07/23/review-the-russian-debutantes-handbook-by-gar...

One of two things must be true:
a) either Gary Shteyngart was channeling one of my ex-boyfriends (a Bukharian Jew from Uzbekistan) when he created Vladimir Girshkin
OR
b) Shteyngart is a supremely talented architect of character.

And unless Shteyngart also has a time machine, I'm going to put my money on the latter rather than the former.

In Vladimir, Shteyngart balances almost paradoxical levels of swagger and self-deprecation; throughout the novel, Vladimir manages to sell himself short one moment, then brazenly shoot the moon the next, and I was with him every step of the way. Even if I hadn't dated someone with the exact same extremes in their show more personality, Girshkin would never have read as inconsistent because Shteyngart's craft is that good and his characterizations, no matter how bizarre, are that honest (more on that in a bit). It's a fascinating balance of traits to watch in a person, and likewise makes for a compelling character to follow, especially when combined with Vladimir's intellect and propensity towards personal analysis.

In Vladimir Girshkin's journey over the course of the novel, Shteyngart's takes a fairly familiar story line and turns it on its head:

boy comes to America from a conflict-ridden country
boy struggles to please both his new American peers and his old-country parents/relatives
Here's the part, where, if Shteyngart were another popular writer pontificating on the perils and complexities of The Immigrant Experience like, say, Amy Tan, the story would continue on as the boy, through the experience of his parents/relatives, is able to find his "unique" self, which usually means the boy becomes a bit more comfortable code-switching and balancing the old-country traditions and new American expectations. (ex: see anything written by Tan. Really. Anything. She's RIDICULOUSLY consistent in her use of this structure, just swap "boy" for "girl" and "old country" for "China." Formulaic, but it works for her.) Instead of Vladimir learning how to be both a Russian Jew and an American (two states he sees as incredibly disparate), through the experience of others, Shteyngart allows Vladimir to venture to the city of Prava (Prague), "the Paris of the 90s", where he embarks on a journey of both deception and self-discovery as he learns to relegate his Russian Jewish childhood, his American adolescence, his Eastern European present and his uncertain future.

The narrative is rife with the bizarre personalities whose influence shapes Vladimir along the way: Challah, his ex-girlfriend, whom he not quite loves, who works in a sex dungeon; the Groudhog, the cut throat yet gregarious Russian mafioso determined to exploit the expat community of Prava who likes to be whipped while in the sauna; the Fan Man, father of the Groundhog, dead set on earning his American citizenship, and whose best friend is a small electric fan to whom he has given imaginary anthropomorphic qualities.

My favorite scene in the novel, which I can share without spoiling the plot, takes place in Prava and highlights not only Shteyngart's unique narrative voice but the East/West motif that underscores the text. Here, Vladimir and the poet Fish are on the balcony of a nightclub and both have just snorted horse tranquilizer (It was the the 90s). From the balcony, Vladimir is watching buses arrive and depart from Prava from the bus station below:

"But Vladimir's examination of this unhappy dichotomy, a dichotomy which was in some ways the story of his life, which brought on feelings of both elation and remorse--the elation of having a special, privileged knowledge of both East and West, the remorse of fitting finally into neither--was interrupted by the stinging, crystal-edged horse powder which the poet Fish administered to him nasally and then

not

much

happened.

Perhaps that's an exaggeration. Something, of course, happened, even while Vladimir withdrew into the upper stories of his brain where the thin mountain air was not conducive to the cognitive process. The buses kept arriving and departing but now they were just buses (buses, you know, transport, point A to point B) and Fish rolling up and down the balcony naked, howling, and waving his tiny purple penis at the moon was just a young man with his purple penis howling. Nothing much was happening in a big way. In fact, nonexistence was no longer so unfathomable (and how many times had he, as a morose child, shut his eyes and plugged his ears with cotton, trying to imagine The Void), but rather a fairly natural progression of this goofy happiness. The floating, bottomless joy of anesthesia.

And then the fifteen minutes were up and, like clockwork, Vladimir was noiselessly airlifted info his body; Fish was putting on his clothes." (p. 306).

Rubric rating: 8. Absurdistan and Super Sad True Love Story are on my holds list at the library and I'm absolutely looking forward to reading more of Shteyngart's unique voice.

All in all, Shteyngart's piece was almost good enough to make me nostalgic for my ex...almost.

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Despite the unlikeable main character, I kept reading this to find out what would happen to the idiot Vladimir Girshkin next. This unusual coming-of-age tale follows our anti-hero from his underachieving life as a hipster wannabe in New York City to his try at a Ponzi scheme mastermind in Prava. He careens from one drunken encounter to the next, always trying to score with the prom queen, and the sexual scenes are decidedly not erotic. Shteyngart is a gifted writer and I frequently laughed out loud, but the story seemed bloated and repetitive, as the focus blurred in Prava, so did my attention.

Gary Shteyngart's first novel, and it shows. While it has the Shteyngartian charm and language, the plot meanders, the philosophy is confused, and the characters listless. Compared to the uproarious mania of Absurdistan, or the "so true it hurts" melodrama of Super Sad True Love Story, this is clearly a lesser novel. Still worth it, if you like his other stuff, but not his best.

At times extremely clever and intelligent writing, was at first drawn in by the writing, and yet the characters are somehow not engaging enough.

Having been born in Russia, and have come to the U.S. at the age of 13, and now living in Los Angeles' 'Little Russia' this book was so spot-on and hilarious with descriptions of Russians and Russian Americans and the whole experience of growing up Russian in America. It was like recognizing many characters in my life on the pages of this book. Wickedly funny.

Having previously read Steyngart's other novel "Absurdistan", I recognised the themes of a Soviet-born narrator observing the turbulent change to capitalism of a peripheral formerly communist country. This novel is lighter and more likeable than Absurdistan, but has more structural problems. There is simply too much material here for one novel, and one feels that the author had trouble tying it all together. The first part in New York is hardly necessary for the novel, and feels like it was added afterwards to raise the page count and to provide a (rather implausable) explanation for how the protagonist finds himself on his mission in Prava. And throughout there is a running commentary on being Jewish and on the Russian soul, with show more Mother Russia exemplified by the protagonist's female ancestors: his grandma symbolising the Soviet pioneer period, and his mother the second half of the 20th century, while the male Russians represent all that's bad with the country.
I enjoyed the humor, the similes and many insightful observations of how immigrants can be divided into A-types and B-types, or how the cornerstones of Soviet society are cruelty, anger, vindictiveness and humiliation. In the second half of the book, there's less of this, as the story becomes more action-paced and needs to be packed up (but even so the author regularly needs a deus ex machina to do so). The female characters are crudely drawn and puzzled me: what was the function of the Francesca character in New York, or of the Frantisek character in Prava, and is it a coincidence that their names are identical? (Frantisek is Czech for Francesco).
Finally, I have an objection about the title. In the book, the word "debutant" is mentioned for the male, Russian narrator's predicament. No female Russian characters (apart from the aforementioned mother and grandmother) are mentioned. It is again puzzling that in the title this has been changed into the female version of the word, and with a misleading cover photo for some editions at that. It's a book about many things, almost too many even, but certainly not about Russian debutantes. show less