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Shteyngart's Super Sad True Love Story first came into my world via an excerpt in the New Yorker, back when I had a gift subscription. I saw potential in its quirky characters and future dysfunctional US. Then the book was published, with a memorable cover, colored circles and repeated words down the front, and every time I walked into a bookstore, I would eye it, wondering if the hardcover purchase would be worth it. By the time it reached a library book sale I saw no harm in buying it for $2.
I wanted to like this book, I really did. The first couple of chapters were really hard for me to get through, and I thought that was a sign to put it down. But other readers had loved it, and so I waited to love it. I kept reading, reluctantly, and then became, to some degree, obsessed with how to identify and verbalize why it wasn't working for me.
The book is clever. I'll give it that. It's commentary on today's society. The technology, the politics, the values or lack thereof. Many times I stopped reading because some concept was so weird, but then I'd realize it how ironically close we are to what was being described. Women wearing "Onionskin jeans" (i.e. see-through pants) for everyone to see their labia? Oh--oh, yeah. Some girls are doing that now. Shteyngart, you're so witty.
Aside from that, I just didn't care for any of the characters. I hated them for being too whiny or too pompous. And I was never really convinced of the love between Eunice and Lenny, the main characters of the book. Their love story wasn't as super sad as much as it was super lame. And I was okay that the world was ending by the final chapters. That's not a spoiler. The world may or may not have ended. I couldn't tell you for sure because by then my eyes had glazed over.
Yet, somehow the book managed three stars in my Goodreads ratings. I'm still trying to sort out my feelings. I'm so confused.
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