Product Description

This is the story of Vladimir Girshkin-part P.T. Barnum, part V.I. Lenin, the man who would conquer half of Europe (albeit the wrong half).

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #31113 in Books
• Published on: 2003-04-29
• Released on: 2003-04-29
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 496 pages

Amazon.com Review
Vladimir Girshkin, a likeable Russian immigrant, searches for love, a decent job, and a credible self-identity in Gary Shteyngart's debut novel, The Russian Debutante's Handbook. With a doctor-father of questionable ethics and a manic, banker mother, Vladimir avoids his suburban parents and their desire that he pursue the almighty dollar as proof of success. Vladimir gets by as an immigration clerk, eking out a living in a cruddy New York City apartment while accumulating an array of quirky acquaintances, from a wealthy but disheveled old man (who claims his electric fan speaks to him) desperate for citizenship to Challa, a portly S/M queen. As a love interest, Challa is replaced by Francesca, a graduate student whose friends welcome Vladimir for the status he brings their bohemian clique, and whose parents encourage them to shack up (she lives at home) as visible proof she can maintain a steady relationship.

The Russian Debutante's Handbook is a quirky amalgam of dead-on American absurdities, albeit with somewhat stereotypical characters. While Vladimir flounders with how to improve his state, he becomes an expatriate in a trendy European city, becomes somewhat of a mobster himself, and generally has a good time. While many of the central characters remain elusively thin, Vladimir is a delight, and Shteyngart's wit is merciless: Russian women wear "wedding cakes of blond hair" and graduate students lounge in a bar "as if waiting for funding to appear." Reminiscent of Gogol and other Russian satirists, The Russian Debutante's Handbook is a genuine, sublime social commentary. --Michael Ferch

From Publishers Weekly
Orwell once remarked that the narrator of Tropic of Cancer was so far from endeavoring to influence the future, he simply lies down and lets things happen to him. Shteyngart, whose sensibility is allied with Miller's, takes a passive character, Vladimir Girshkin, and makes him briefly proactivewith disastrous resultsin his smart debut novel. Vladimir is the son of immigrants who came to the U.S. via a Carter administration swap (American wheat for Russian Jews); his father, a doctor prone to dreams of suicide and complicated medical schemes, and his mother, an entrepreneur who makes fun of her son's gait, give him the inestimable gift of alienation. In true slacker fashion, Vladimir, at 25, is wasting his expensive education clerking at the Emma Lazarus Immigration Absorption Society. A client, Rybakov, bribes Vladimir to get him American citizenship, confiding that his son, the Groundhog, is a leading businessman (in prostitutes and drugs) in Pravathe Paris of the nineties in the fictional Republika Stolovaya. Vladimir fakes a citizenship ceremony for Rybakov in order to curry favor with the Groundhog. Then, because he has unwisely repelled the sexual advances of crime boss Jordi while trying to make some illicit bucks to keep his girlfriend, Francesca, in squid and sake dinners in Manhattan, Vladimir leaves abruptly for Prava. Once there, and backed by the Groundhog, Vladimir embarks on a scheme to fleece the American students who have flocked to Prava's legendary scene. Although the satire on the expatriate American community is a little too easy, Shteyngart's Vladimir remains an impressive piece of work, an amoral buffoon who energizes this remarkably mature work.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Failurchka Mother's Little Failure is what Vladimir Girshkin's overweening Russian immigrant mother calls her 25-year-old son at the beginning of this picaresque, episodic, and somewhat sprawling first novel. Vladimir is stuck in a dead-end job and saddled with girlfriend Challah, "queen of everything musky and mammal-like." Then through a series of chance encounters, he is catapulted to the eastern European city of "Prava" to find himself welcomed into the fold of powerful Mafiosi. Shteyngart introduces a large cast of exotic characters, mainly twentysomethings meandering from adventure to adventure. Yet this distinctive new voice, which is both richly ironic and often side-splittingly funny, still seems to be seeking the right register. The relentless humor and satire obscure the development of character that is necessary to make readers believe the cast is real and not just being staged. Moreover, one wonders why the author felt the need to (thinly) disguise Prague (Prava) with its river Tavlata (Vltava) and the 1969 (1968) Soviet invasion. Thus, his highly imaginative but at times maddening panorama comes to resemble a dazzling Potemkin village. Though this is not an experimental novel, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the author is still experimenting with a very large talent he's not entirely sure what to do with. But having gotten a taste, we will eagerly await his next offering, in which less just might be more. Recommended for all literary collections and larger public libraries. Edward Cone, New York
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Funny and clever but drags on
As a Russian immigrant (he came to US when he was 7), Shteyngart writes about what he knows and it shows in his books. He is an excellent writer. Like his subsequent novel, Absurdistan, Russian Debutante's Handbook will deliver if it is humor, satire, and amusing prose you are after. If you do not mind reading the same type of genre and style then I would recommend both of his books. However, after Absurdistan I found certain aspects of this novel got tedious and by the end I was happy that it was over. Shteyngart's strength is his humor and original writing style. His bizarre plot and final chase scene became too much like a cheap Hollywood movie. Nevertheless I recommend reading at least one of his two books.

Writer should write more than pretty sentences
The author clearly has a talent with language, there are many cleverly written passages in the book - and these are sometimes quite amusing. I wanted to like this book, but am putting it down at about 275 pages into it. The main character gives me no reason to care what he will do next. The catalog of characters are caricature comments on cultural (not just ethnic but class and attitude) stereotypes that wear out their initial delivery of comical observation. Perhaps this book is just too long for what it is. I liked - not loved - Absurdistan, and I found this novel to be more heavily inflicted with the problems of that book. Sorry, I tried, just couldn't care enough to finish it.

dazzling
I am glad to see the term "picaresque" applied to this novel, for it truly belongs within that genre. But while the story bounds along, at times verging on the highly improbable, the language dazzles on every page - in every paragraph, in fact. The author, to whom English was (I imagine) a 2nd or 3rd language, shares with Joseph Conrad (and not a few other non-native English speakers) an enviable mastery of the most subtle wit, the choicest use of epithets, the snappiest of similes. And, having spent a bit of time in Tbilisi, Georgia, in the past decade, I thought more than once or twice in the course of my reading how well that valley city, with its river, smog - and wall-to-wall gangsters - could have served as the setting of this unlikely but likeable tale...