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3.09 AVERAGE
3.09 AVERAGE
Reading about post-Soviet countries gives me something to compare to where I've been - but I prefer narrators who I like, sort of.
i'll be thinking about this book for a long time. images will come to me at airports, hyatts, over sturgeon kebabs, at my laptop, during my first trip to the bronx, drinking johnnie walker black, halliburton news, and all news of the middle east and russia.
misha is a physically grotesque character with a mind i couldn't get enough of. if shteyngart had drawn a character with a bella figura half the story would be lost. this story is part ode to the lost 30-something, an indictment of war as money machine, and an expose admitting the 21st century world is a very very small place thanks to capitalism, technology, and a global mis-application of flawed cultural relativism.
shteyngart is a gifted writer, painful to read at times, but he doesn't spare a word.
misha is a physically grotesque character with a mind i couldn't get enough of. if shteyngart had drawn a character with a bella figura half the story would be lost. this story is part ode to the lost 30-something, an indictment of war as money machine, and an expose admitting the 21st century world is a very very small place thanks to capitalism, technology, and a global mis-application of flawed cultural relativism.
shteyngart is a gifted writer, painful to read at times, but he doesn't spare a word.
Meh. For all the hype that this book received in the end there was something annoying about it. At the same time, I finished it and the characters do stay with me.
Dnf at about 2/3. Just did not like the story at all.
adventurous
funny
reflective
sad
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Too strange for me. I found it equal parts offensive and sad.
dark
funny
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I have mixed feelings about "Absurdistan." It started out hilariously as the author set up the situations and characters. It felt original for a while. The madcap circumcision scene is riotous and classic. Eventually, however, the story treaded water for a couple hundred pages while going for a political sendup of pointless ethnic strife, oligarchy, the military-industrial complex and more. It's punctuated by, basically, fat-people porn played for laughs -- which gets old after a while. Finally in the last 50 pages or so, a plot breaks out, the humor returns, and Misha gets heroic. It was fun and I'll try some of Shteyngart's other works but I can't imagine this would be among the best of them.
It made me laugh but even a satire needs interesting characters. Misha is mildly interesting but mostly for being a pathetic and useless person. Everyone else is a cartoon. I was bored for the last third of the book.
Immediately reminded me of Confederacy of Dunces, and I didn't care for that book either.