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Super sad true love story
a novel
521 pages
A hilariously bleak and tenderly tragic portrait of a doomed romance set against the backdrop of a collapsing, hyper-capitalist America.
What it feels like
Reading this book feels like scrolling through a terrifyingly accurate social media feed while holding the hand of someone you love. It is a brisk, tragicomic ride through a hyper-capitalist, technologically obsessed near-future that feels uncomfortably close to our present. The narrative balances a frenetic, absurd energy with a deeply melancholic undercurrent, capturing the profound loneliness of a hyper-connected world. The prose is sharp and ebullient, shifting effortlessly between biting corporate satire and the tender, neurotic vulnerability of its protagonist's diary entries. It will delight readers who crave biting social commentary but still want a story with a beating, vulnerable heart, offering a journey that is simultaneously laugh-out-loud funny and genuinely, profoundly sad.
- Mood
- frenetic
- tragicomic
- anxious
- hyper-connected
- Tone
- satirical
- wry
- melancholic
- absurd
- tender
- Pace
- brisk
- Themes
- technological alienation · decay of empire · mortality and aging · fragility of love · hyper-consumerism
- The writing
- Sharp, hyper-verbal, and ebullient, seamlessly blending dystopian tech-newspeak with deeply neurotic, soulful diary entries.
- The arc
- Moves from the awkward, hopeful spark of an improbable romance through a brief, genuine connection, ultimately descending into inevitable heartbreak as the world falls apart.
- Who it's for
- Fans of biting, hyper-literate social satire who still want a story with a beating, vulnerable heart.
Content notes
- societal collapse
- mortality anxiety
- state violence
- sexual content
About the book
From the New York Times review written by Michiko Kakutani, June 2010: "Gary Shteyngart’s wonderful new novel, “Super Sad True Love Story,” is a supersad, superfunny, superaffecting performance — a book that not only showcases the ebullient satiric gifts he demonstrated in his entertaining 2002 debut, “The Russian Debutante’s Handbook,” but that also uncovers his abilities to write deeply and movingly about love and loss and mortality. It’s a novel that gives us a cutting comic portrait of a futuristic America, nearly ungovernable and perched on the abyss of fiscal collapse, and at the same time it is a novel that chronicles a sweetly real love affair as it blossoms from its awkward, improbable beginnings."
Description from Open Library.
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