Super Sad True Love Story

I almost almost almost read the entire book - I think I finally gave up with a chapter to go. Just a bit too possible of an impossible future, and a bit too much pathetic pathos on the part of our narrator and all of his friends.

Shteyngart's telling of a future where the US has suffered financial collapse and is under the control of foreign national banks who are taking over everyday life. And Russian immigrant Lenny has fallen in love with Korean immigrant Eunice. They try to keep their struggling relationship alive on social media. Much of the novel is social media posts that demand the reader to keep up.

His characteristic satire once again rules the page in a weird but brilliant story.

5* esp if you love George Saunders stories

Middled-aged, hand wringing New York Jew falls for almost inappropriately young Asian girl? Stop me if you've heard this before. Set in some not too distant, post literate dystopia where people are glued to their mobile devices texting ackronymanically with ROFLAARP and TIMATOV while obsessing over their credit scores, rating each others fuckability in real-time and shopping at places called AssLuxury... It's just all too very. Maybe this sort of winking irony is just lost on me.

I do have to say that as an otherwise illiterate second generation, Westernized (corrupted) Korean I got a cheap thrill managing to translate the mangled Kor-Engrish sprinkled throughout. Mu-she-suh indeed.