Our Country Friends by Gary Shteyngart
This is a novel that I had been wanting to read for some time as it was touted as one of the best comic novels of 2021 and one of the first by a big-name writer to be set against the backdrop of the covid 19 pandemic. I was pleased, therefore, when my good friend, Rob, chose it as his book group selection. Having now read it, however, I’m not quite sure what to make of it.
Here’s goes, though, and I’ll start with the short verdict I gave to the book group: The first three quarters of the book, where the writer uses the pandemic context to satirise the attitudes and behaviour of a group of privileged Americans, is sharp, well-executed and good fun. However, the final section, which creates a hazy perspective of jumbled memories and perceptions from one of the characters as he descends into illness, is less satisfying and strangely at odds with what has come before.
The novel begins in early 2020 just as the virus is beginning to break out across America. Alexander Senderovsky (Sasha), a writer and academic, is preparing for a group friends whom he has invited to his country house to sit out the pandemic; he assumes it will be a short-lived thing. There are obviously clear links with Boccaccio’s Decameron – one of the characters is even called Dee Cameron - as it mimics the 14th century text with its multitude of stories presented by a group of people quarantining in the countryside outside Florence as the Black Death devastates the city. There are also knowing references to Chekhov’s plays that place awkward or trapped groups of outsiders in isolated locations. Sasha seems to be deliberately embracing such comparisons as he has created his own form of country dacha with its generous rural space and rustic accommodation.
Sasha has moved from the city to his country retreat with his wife Masha and adopted eight year old daughter, Nat. He has invited his closest friends Karen Cho, Vinod Mehta and Ed Kim to join him. As you can see these are the children of immigrant families and despite the wealth and status that at least three of them have, there is a sense that the Trumpean shock has made their place less secure in the Land of the Free than they had imagined. Karen from a Korean immigrant family has, like Sasha, made her mark – she has produced and made a fortune from a dating app. Ed, all elegance and good taste is trapped by ennui but bolstered by his Korean family’s wealth. Vinod is deeply intelligent with a gentle, other-worldly acceptance of his fate – he is the friend who hasn’t fulfilled his promise and is now ill with cancer.
Into this mix, Sasha adds two starry outsiders. Dee Cameron, a former student from one of Sasha’s writing courses, is making a name for herself with her online posts. It’s difficult to explain the unique tone and perspective that she strikes in her writing but it seems to be a mix of identity politics linked to a willingness to say things that might be unsayable. She identifies with the emotions of blue collar, left behind America without endorsing the consequences of those feelings. She understands that her success is predicated on online hits and those come from controversy. Therefore, when she first encounters her lockdown companions she thinks about how she can write about them in a critical way. Yet she also has charm and attractive personal qualities. I don’t think she’s supposed to embody the contradictions in modern America but that’s what I took from her initial depiction. It would be interesting to hear what others think.
The other outsider has so much star wattage that he is referred to throughout as The Actor. He is dazzlingly attractive, both physically and personally, and a real artist with a commitment to worthy projects. Oh, and he takes his craft and therefore himself very seriously. When I tried to envisage him, it was as a combination of Tom Cruise (easy charm and appeal, with an iron determination and need for control) and Sean Penn (a blazing, passionate talent with an inflated sense of his own significance). Anyway, he has been invited because Sasha’s star is on the wane and he desperately needs The Actor to give the go ahead for a prestigious, television drama that they are working on together.
On the group’s first night together, the plot is set running when a demonstration of Karen’s app triggers a relationship between Dee and The Actor. Mind you, before the relationship gets into its stride, The Actor also becomes embroiled in a more transactional sort of relationship with Masha which Sasha is too preoccupied to give the attention it needs. In this first section, we also we learn that for a range of complex reasons Sasha needs to hide the manuscript of a novel Vinod wrote many years previously. He had reluctantly not sought publication back then because Sasha advised him that it would be an embarrassment to do so. Just like the gun in Uncle Vanya, we know that, having been introduced to this document at the outset, it is going to reappear later in the action. And it does, with a quietly devastating impact.
This unlikely commune is gently mocked because their lives seem secure and comfortable during the madness of the pandemic, even if they are too bound up in their personal concerns to see that is the case. Whilst there are life and death struggles elsewhere, Sasha’s family and their guests party, and fall in and out of love in an indulgent manner. And yet despite its obviously satirical attitude to its characters, this book considers the importance of long well-established friendships. It’s also about the importance of remembering who you are at your core when middle-aged anxieties and pressures make you forget yourself. That certainly is the case for Sasha and Masha but all the characters are affected by their four months together. For one glorious period of a few weeks the right people connect with one another and there is harmony in the country. It can’t last, though. As Masha always feared, her guests’ lax attitude to the virus eventually fails to protect their charmed circle from reality.
I’ll say no more and I suspect what I have said makes the story sound more serious than it actually is. I think I was wryly amused for large chunks of the book because I was aware that their pretentions and precious attitudes were familiar … darn it, I catch myself indulging such attitudes daily. Yet, as I’ve indicated, I warmed to the characters; and it was not just that I understood their foibles but because they had strong feelings for one another and at key moments their self-realisation made them focus on what was important.
I can’t wholeheartedly recommend this book because of my reservations about the final section but I will certainly look out for other books by Shteyngart.