The Russian Debutante's Handbook

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Gary Shteyngart's debut takes readers through the end of an era of exuberance and uncertainty, seen through the eyes of one of the most engaging protagonists in recent fiction. Vladimir Girshkin, the child of immigrant Soviet Jews, is prepared to spend the rest of his life at the bottom of the American socioeconomic heap. But when he becomes the recipient of the attentions of an uncomfortably rich girl, this perennial loser is sparked into a sudden, potentially disastrous quest for fame, fortune, and a new identity.

Shteyngart relentlessly trains his gimlet eye on the slackers, posers, and perennial adolescents of modern-day New York and the fictional eastern European city of Prava, the laid-back flip side of dot-com fever. But The Russian Debutante's Handbook doesn't actually deliver on the title's promise to lay out the rules for Vladimir to follow; watching our bumbling buffoon of a hero figure out that there seem to be no rules at all is the considerable pleasure this enchanting novel provides. (Summer 2002 Selection)

Elle

The rampaging narrative is festooned on every page with glitering one-liners,improbably apt similes and other miniature pleasures.

Harper's Bazaar

A brilliant funny debut ...

Harper's Bazaar

A brilliant, funny debut describing the vicissitudes of immigration today, as experienced by the hero, a young Russian-American.

New York Times

[An] uproarious and highly entertaining story...

O Magazine

... [a] tender and hilarious &eacuteemigré's romance.

O. Magazine

[Gary Shteyngart's] sense of the exploded past and volatile present suffuses this gifted first novel...

Time Out New York

If Henry Miller were Russian,this is a book he might have written.

Time Out New York

This picaresque debut...transcends its personal genesis to become an all-around great American story.

Vanity Fair

... a terrifically charming tale of a young Russian immigrant's capitalist and carnal aspirations.

Washington Post

Gary Shteyngart ... has produced a sardonic,moving and ingeniously crafted update of earlier sagas of upward-struggling American newcomers.

Kevin Greenberg

This moving and funny debut novel offers a fresh take on the oft-told story of the immigrant longing for an authentic sense of place. After a resolutely bumpy thirteen years in America, Vladimir Girshkin, the "enduring victim of every practical joke the late twentieth century had to offer," feels estranged from his adopted homeland, his dysfunctional parents and especially his girlfriend, whose "bright orange hair" lies "strewn across his Alphabet City hovel as if a cadre of Angora rabbits had visited." Sick of the daily toil of life in New York, Vladimir decides to move back to the Eastern bloc. The novel, which opens on Vladimir's twenty-fifth birthday, traces his travels from a Manhattan full of youth and new money to an Eastern European metropolis where his status as an immigrant is bizarrely mirrored in the legions of idealistic, easily duped Americans who have emigrated there. This is a complex and impressive work, full of humanistic touches and worldly humor.

Publishers Weekly

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) (Jan.)

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Library Journal

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 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

First-novelist Shteyngart casts a cold eye alike on Clinton-era aimlessness and free-enterprise excess in Eastern Europe. It's Vladimir Girshkin's 25th birthday in 1993, and his mother wastes no time reminding him that he's a disappointment. Since the family arrived in New York from the USSR 13 years before, she's become a successful businesswoman, while Dr. Girshkin adds to their coffers by defrauding Medicare. But Vladimir has dropped out of a progressive midwestern college to take a job at the Emma Lazarus Society helping new immigrants. One of them, the decidedly crazy Mr. Rybakov, wants to get Vladimir in touch with his son Groundhog, a mafioso operating in Prava, "the Paris of the '90s," an imaginary Eastern European city transformed by the collapse of communism into a mecca for criminals and novelty-seeking Americans. At first, Vladimir prefers to hang around the trendier sections of Manhattan, exchanging grad-student babble with the crowd gathered around girlfriend Francesca. But a misadventure in Miami with an amorous drug-dealer makes it advisable for him to get out of town, so Vladimir heads for Prava, where he persuades Groundhog to fund a Ponzi scheme based on getting American expatriates to invest in a literary magazine. Heavy drinking, observations about the void after communism, and a new girlfriend await Vladimir before his bamboozling comes to light and he must once again flee vengeful mafiosi. A sardonic but surprisingly moving epilogue finds him five years later in Cleveland, working at his father-in-law's insurance company, thinking wistfully of the days when he lived "foolishly, imperially, ecstatically" in the Wild West of Eastern Europe. Himself a Leningrad-bornAmerican citizen, Shteyngart mercilessly exposes the moral ambiguities of late-20th-century life under whatever form of government. Though slightly chilly toward its large cast of characters, the novel is redeemed by its thematic sweep and Vladimir's engaging brio. Ambitious, funny, intelligent, in love with irony and literary allusions, as if by a lighter Nabokov.