About:
Vera, or Faith by Gary Shteyngart presents a poignant coming-of-age story through the eyes of a ten-year-old girl named Vera. Set in a dystopian version of America, the plot revolves around Vera navigating her family issues and the absurdities of a status-obsessed society. She deals with her complicated relationships with her parents, particularly with her distracted father and her stepmother. Throughout the narrative, Shteyngart skillfully blends humor with deeper social commentary, illustrating Vera's challenges in understanding her changing world while grappling with feelings of inadequacy and a longing for her mother's attention.
The writing style is vibrant and conversational, making the story easily accessible. Shteyngart's prose captures the innocence of childhood while probing into serious themes like race, democracy, and family dynamics. The narrative includes clever wit, social satire, and thoughtful reflections, echoing the traditions of literary forebears like Nabokov and James. This mixture of light-heartedness and depth emphasizes both Vera's naivety and intelligence, making her journey engaging and relatable as she confronts both personal and societal quandaries.
From The Publisher:
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
A poignant, sharp-eyed, and bitterly funny tale of a family struggling to stay together in a country rapidly coming apart, told through the eyes of their wondrous ten-year-old daughter, by the bestselling author of Super Sad True Love Story and Our Country Friends
"Pull up a beach chair: The book of the summer is here. . . . A poignant Harriet the Spy-esque delight."-People (Book of the Week)
"Genius . . . [a] miracle."-The Washington Post
"A novel you can read in one sitting that will stay with you forever."-Karen Russell
"Very funny, very sad, very sharp, and completely delightful."-Elif Batuman
"A brilliant fable about childhood, and so much more, in our broken country."- Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"A must-read."-Los Angeles Times
"Shteyngart is one of the best comedians in literature today."- BookPage (starred review)
A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK: The New York Times, Time, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Bustle, Vulture, Town & Country, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Book Riot, Publishers Weekly, Literary Hub, AV Club, Hey Alma
The Bradford-Shmulkin family is falling apart. A very modern blend of Russian, Jewish, Korean, and New England WASP, they love one another deeply but the pressures of life in an unstable America are fraying their bonds. There's Daddy, a struggling, cash-thirsty editor whose Russian heritage gives him a surprising new currency in the upside-down world of twenty-first-century geopolitics; his wife, Anne Mom, a progressive, underfunded blue blood from Boston who's barely holding the household together; their son, Dylan, whose blond hair and Mayflower lineage provide him pride of place in the newly forming American political order; and, above all, the young Vera, half-Jewish, half-Korean, and wholly original.
Observant, sensitive, and always writing down new vocabulary words, Vera wants only three things in life: to make a friend at school; Daddy and Anne Mom to stay together; and to meet her birth mother, Mom Mom, who will at last tell Vera the secret of who she really is and how to ensure love's survival in this great, mad, imploding world.
Both biting and deeply moving, Vera, or Faith is a boldly imagined story of family and country told through the clear and tender eyes of a child. With a nod to What Maisie Knew, Henry James's classic story of parents, children, and the dark ironies of a rapidly transforming society, Vera, or Faith demonstrates why Shteyngart is, in the words of The New York Times, "one of his generation's most exhilarating writers."
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