Define Books As The Russian Debutante's Handbook
| Original Title: | The Russian Debutante's Handbook |
| ISBN: | 1573229881 (ISBN13: 9781573229883) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Characters: | Vladimir Girshkin |
| Setting: | New York City, New York(United States) |
| Literary Awards: | National Jewish Book Award for Fiction (2002), Stephen Crane Award for First Fiction |
Gary Shteyngart
Paperback | Pages: 476 pages Rating: 3.54 | 6591 Users | 716 Reviews
Be Specific About Of Books The Russian Debutante's Handbook
| Title | : | The Russian Debutante's Handbook |
| Author | : | Gary Shteyngart |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Deluxe Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 476 pages |
| Published | : | April 29th 2002 by Riverhead Trade |
| Categories | : | Fiction. Cultural. Russia. Humor. Novels |
Explanation During Books The Russian Debutante's Handbook
The Russian Debutante's Handbook introduces Vladimir Girshkin, one of the most original and unlikely heroes of recent times. The twenty-five-year-old unhappy lover to a fat dungeon mistress, affectionately nicknamed "Little Failure" by his high-achieving mother, Vladimir toils his days away as a lowly clerk at the bureaucratic Emma Lazarus Immigrant Absorption Society. When a wealthy but psychotic old Russian war hero appears, Vladimir embarks on an adventure of unrelenting lunacy that takes us from New York's Lower East Side to the hip frontier wilderness of Prava--the Eastern European Paris of the nineties. With the help of a murderous but fun-loving Russian mafioso, Vladimir infiltrates the Prava expat community and launches a scheme as ridiculous as it is brilliant.Bursting with wit, humor, and rare insight, The Russian Debutante's Handbook is both a highly imaginative romp and a serious exploration of what it means to be an immigrant in America.
Rating Of Books The Russian Debutante's Handbook
Ratings: 3.54 From 6591 Users | 716 ReviewsCriticism Of Books The Russian Debutante's Handbook
Ten years after its publication, I wonder if any of the critics who breathed hot steam all over The Russian Debutante's Handbook now have morning-after second thoughts. Because I don't see where Shteyngart's first novel "tops Saul Bellow's for bounce and Philip Roth's for wit." Not even close.Granted, it's got all the properties of hot-commodity literary fiction. It's tidily crafted and smoothly written, an easy read and occasionally clever. It delivers chuckles but not a single revelation.I feel like I've been reading a different book toeveryone else?! 'Satire of hipsters'?- maybe for about 10 pages, the rest just descended into the "comic" failures of Vladimir in the crime world... I was literally forcing myself to read up to certain pages, so in the end I quit. To be honest, I was turned off from the very first nine pages which were full of people saying how good the book was. If the book is so good, why does it need that? Very suspicious...I'm so disappointed, I have been
I feel like I went on a date with this guy that everybody said I would totally love, and I don't want to be rude or anything but I'm really having a not-fun evening with him, I don't get the appeal, he seems like pretty much every other self-absorbed type telling his long long and not very interesting story (OH DOES YOUR MOTHER EXPECT TOO MUCH SUCCESS FROM YOU HOW SPECIAL AND UNIQUE TELL ME MORE), and I realized around page 250 out of 400 or so that as the book is not a human being it is not at
I found a dusty copy of this book lying unattended to on my mother's bookshelf, sandwiched between Updike and Dickens, believe it or not. I believe what drew me in was a blurb on the back comparing Shtyngart to Saul Below.Indeed, the plot is analogous to The Adventures of Augie March (and in fact, I think there are a couple of allusions to that great novel in Shtyngart's novel), but if you go into this one looking for something akin to the beauty and flawlessness of Bellow's prose, you'll be
I loved the language in this book - the weird, fresh phrases and the author's obvious fascination with English words, their sound and their usage. This seems to be a common thread in books by smart Russian/Eastern European men writing in English, though I haven't read enough of these authors to make a reliable generalization. The language was enough to carry me pretty far, but I felt that there wasn't much more to this book than that. The beginning was excellent - when Vladimir is working at a
Without proper care, satire can devolve into a forced ride along authorial whims with only flat and equally manipulated characters for company.
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