Gary Shteyngart, The Russian Debutante's Handbook

In a few weeks, I’ll be hosting a conversation with writer Gary Shteyngart as part of the Buffalo Humanities Festival. In preparation for that event, I'm rereading his work, beginning with his first novel The Russian Debutante's Handbook, published in 2003. Shteyngart is an amazingly inventive and original winter and this coming of age story featuring his unprepossessing protagonist, Vladimir Girshkin, showcases the full range of his talents. It's a big book in every way--over 400 pages long, with multiple locations, and a dizzying array of characters--and yet at its heart the book's concerns are quite simple: what does it mean to be an American for an immigrant? Can an immigrant ever feel at home in America? Or anywhere else, for that matter? Of course, these are deceptively simple questions that have been tackled by dozens upon dozens of writers and Shteyngart does justice to the complexity of his themes. What's most original about the book is his use of humor; this, combined with his incredible eye for detail, make him a master satirist. And yet he's also capable of writing without sentimentality and with genuine pathos about the need to be loved and to belong and in this regard, there's something curiously old-fashioned about his writing. Although the novel maintains a running dialog with the American tradition of immigrant fiction, trying more often than not to make fun of it, the overall impact of RDH is to remind us of the timelessness of the problems and challenges that the expatriate faces when trying to understand her or his adopted country. It's inevitable that in this 'kitchen sink' of a book, into which Shteyngart throws everything, some parts work better than others, but on the whole it's an extraordinary first novel and should encourage anyone to read more of his work.