Gary Shteyngart brings a touch of Chekhov to a pandemic social comedy

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Gary Shteyngart uses the architecture of Uncle Vanya for his wry comedy of manners.

, the 14th-century story collection that Savonarola burned in the bonfire of the vanities. Shakespeare wroteduring lockdown, too, a meditation as much on the changing nature of the modern family as on the disintegration of the modern state. Gary Shteyngart’sis a wry instance in this category, a comedy of manners that has the dilemmas of the creative class, the postmodern take on race relations and the nature of true love in its sights.

Shteyngart has made a career out of sending himself up, this time through his protagonist, Sasha Senderovsky, who spends most of his time “tooling around” on his country estate in a dressing gown and pocket square, drinking or contriving to censor a friend’s novel while he tries to resurrect a failing TV script as he plays host in a pandemic lockdown.Senderovsky is one of a number of Shteyngartian schlemiels who gradually endear themselves to the reader.

A mysterious black pick-up truck, or the encroaching presence of “Blue Lives Matter” signs, appear and become part of the scope of the novel as matter-of-factly as a Korean boy band, a precocious child, or the presence of an internet virality that upends the lives of the characters. As the story moves towards its affecting denouement, it returns to the questions generated by the now discredited Tröö Emotions. And there’s the big question: when technology is what connects us to the outside world, how much of what we see and feel is real, how much is a projection, an illusion, a confrontation with our repressed inner selves?displays a surprising faith in the novel itself.

 

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