Book Review: Super Sad True Love Story

When we meet the hero of Super Sad True Love Story, Lenny Abramov, he wants to live forever because he’s fallen in love with a Korean-American girl, Eunice Park. She’s half his age, which is why he wants to extend his lifespan. The good news is that Lenny works for a company that is in the business of extending people’s lives. Unfortunately, the bad outweighs the good: Lenny’s unhealthy body isn’t ideal for the immortality treatment. Being overweight, balding and bunion-ed means he is also uncool and so in a room of 50 people, he is given a Fuckability rating of 48. In the unspecified times he inhabits, everything is digitised but Lenny has an entire wall of books that he reads rather than “scans”, and a diary that he physically writes, as opposed to “streaming” shows and buying things online. Lives revolve around the äppärät, a data streaming device that makes the iPhone seem like an electronic dinosaur.

Gary Shteyngart’s novel isn’t set in a dystopic future as much as an almost-present, post-telephone, digitised nightmare. America is a lawless, bankrupt and broken state that is on the verge of civil war. China rules the world and the yuan is the most stable currency. Within a few pages, you realise quickly how close we are to this new age. Everyone is absorbed with their äppärät. People use meetings with friends as settings for their podcast-like shows; the äppärät scan crowds and inform them of people’s credit ratings; people don’t talk to one another much, and friends “verball” each other using their äppärät and using a Facebook-esque network called Global Teens.

Super Sad True Love Story is a satire of the digital culture that we’re so proud of having created. With charming irony, the novel about a culture that hates books is made up of Eunice’s text messages that get progressively wordier and Lenny’s written diary entries. Unlike the clinical, clever tone of satirists like Martin Amis, Shteyngart’s writing is full of unexpected tenderness. Just when you’re ready to sneer at Eunice’s superficiality, Shteyngart presents a conversation between her and her sister that is rich with the prickly affection of siblings. The novel really is about the love: the ties between parents and children, the odd and sweet relationship that Lenny and Eunice develop, Lenny’s attachment to his wall of books and New York City, even if it has turned into an Absurdistan. Shteyngart is also brilliant at creating distinctive voices for his different characters.

But the novel isn’t an easy read. Shteyngart plunges the reader into this future without explaining the new world order. The fascination of this culture with transparent jeans, looking hot, getting more hits on “streams” and making more money might feel difficult to connect with but Super Sad Story Love Story is worth a little patience. By the end of the novel, the life extension experiment proves to be a disaster but Lenny’s and Eunice’s super sad true love story is immortalised, both in this book and as indestructible bits of data accessed and forgotten by the äppärät.

Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart, Penguin India, Rs499. Buy it from Flipkart.com.