Super Sad True Love Story

A dystopian novel taking place in a futurstic, electronic-centered America,  Gary Shteyngart's novel is an interesting look of what we will become. It focuses on Lenny Abramov, a 39-year-old who works at Post-Human Services, where they try to make people live forever. Lenny narrates the book, and throughout the novel the reader sees snippets from Eunice Park's, his girlfriend's, e-mail. It's a world where hardly anyone reads books anymore (there's a warning on the cover of the book: "READ AT YOUR OWN RISK! Harvard Fashion School Studies has been shown that reeding long-form texts and dicrease Shopping/Consumptioning abilities and cause eye strain problemz and unattractiveness in girlz aged 3 to 90") and where people are more concerned about their purchases than their families. As literary critic Edmund White proclaimed on the back of the book, "I never really believed in the horrors of Nineteen Eighty-Four, but the details of Super Sad True Love Story are all too convincing." I agree with him. It is completely possible that the world as we know it will be  sucked into consumerism and forget about books and literature all together. With items such as the Kindle (which is an awesome invention that I recommend 100%), books can be viewed as slowly dying out. I think that we have to strike an uneasy balance between the two - between the past and the future, books and e-readers, tradition and innovation. I highly suggest reading Super Sad True Love Story. If you like Shetyngart's work, you should also check out Russian Debutante's Handbook and Absurdistan, two of his other critically-acclaimed novels. Rating: ★★★★★