aj_x416 's review for:

Absurdistan by Gary Shteyngart

2.0

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2.5 stars, but getting a bump on account of inventiveness in its language and descriptions. Essentially, this book is held out as satire, but what was it satirizing exactly? A wealthy boorish sex-obsessed young Russian winds up in a fictitious nation sort of modelled on Azerbaijan but definitely not Azerbaijan. So in its depictions of fictitious people, culture, faith, landscape and politics, when there's no actual comparator, how is that satire? It's more of an absurdist romp, a farce. And for that it needed to be funnier. I mean, a Holocaust museum designed to resemble broken matzoh is about as funny as it got for me. The main character, Misha Vainberg, is an anti-hero because he's unlikeable. Which is a problem. Unlike Humbert Humbert, there's no redeeming wit or razor sharp insight, just the opposite: Misha bumbles along and often mistreats others or remains oblivious to misfortune (yet occassionally he seems blessed by moments of clarity that suggest a real brain chugs inside that doltish head). In other words, it's hard to care about him, let alone feel affinity, and there's precious little other than an occasional laugh to keep me involved. In short, it grew tiresome.