There's something about Gary

Winnipeg Free Press

4 days ago

Since his 2002 novel The Russian Debutante's Handbook, Shteyngart has established himself as one of America's foremost satirists, often aiming his whip-smart literary barbs at characters not entirely unlike himself. (He showed off this skill to great effect in his sole book-length work of non-fiction, the 2014 memoir Little Failure.)
The Russian-born American novelist is nimble, quick to respond to current events in his fiction — his 2010 novel Super Sad True Love Story was set against the backdrop of the 2008 financial crisis, his 2018 novel Lake Success is set in the days before the first Donald Trump administration and his last novel, 2021's Our Country Friends, chronicled an eccentric group from in and around New York who retreat to a rural home to ride out the pandemic.
This time around, Shteyngart has set a potential coming-of-age novel in a near-future (but eerily familiar) dystopian America as it descends into totalitarianism. In Vera, or Faith, precocious 10-year-old Vera Bradford-Shmulkin takes centre stage as she struggles with keeping her family together while working to uncover the truth about her Korean-born birth mother.
Brigitte Lacombe photo
Gary Shteyngart's fiction often respond to current events — his last novel, 2021's Our Country Friends, followed friends who retreated to a rural home to wait out the pandemic.
Vera (the Russian word for faith) lives in New York with her Russian-born Jewish father Igor, an editor at a literary magazine (and Shteyngartian stand-in), his WASPy lefty wife Anne (Anne Mom, to Vera) and Vera's raffish younger half-brother Dylan. Vera's birth mother, who she calls Mom Mom, hasn't been in the picture for as long as Vera can remember.
Wise beyond her years, Vera longs to become a woman in STEM when she gets older. She keeps a diary of unknown words and phrases she hears uttered at home by her father and stepmother. (More on this in a bit.) A nervous and awkward child, Vera's an outcast at school; her best friend is an AI-driven automated chess board named Kaspie (after Garry Kasparov) that lives in a drawer in her bedroom.
At school, Vera is chosen to debate a classmate over a proposed Five-Three constitutional amendment that would give those who 'landed on the shores of our continent before or during the Revolutionary War' but didn't arrive in chains (read: white Americans) a vote worth five-thirds of everyone else's votes.
The teacher assigns Vera and Yumi, the daughter of a Japanese diplomat, the pro Five-Three argument, which spurs a burgeoning friendship Vera has been so desperately craving.
Between debate prep sessions, Yumi helps Vera search for clues about her birth mother online.
Meanwhile, Igor (called Daddy throughout) grapples with the on-again, off-again potential sale of the magazine to a Rhodesian billionaire, sending him spiraling into a world of booze, doom-scrolling in his underwear and pot smoking. Anne Mom hosts a salon for other well-off anti-Five-Three women at which Igor is to speak, but he's a no-show, sending the family dynamic further south.
When Vera covertly follows her father to a secret meeting she thinks has something to do with Mom Mom's health and wherabouts, she discovers something far more sinister that will have significant consequences to the Bradford-Shmulkin household.
Yumi and Vera do eventually uncover some information about Mom Mom, and after having spent most of our time in and around the family apartment and school, Shteyngart sends the reader on a road trip with Vera across state lines — where patrol guards make women take a blood test going in and out of the state to prove they've not had an abortion — before a wildly action-packed twist of a final act.
The book is written in the third person, following Vera quite closely. Each chapter is titled 'She Had to…' followed by her task in the chapter ('She Had to Tell Anne Mom the Truth,' 'She Had to Figure Out if Daddy Was a Traitor,' etc.).
Vera's observations of her family and classmates as well as her own ruminations on kissing, espionage, the looming Five-Three debate and more are a delight to read, with an innocence that wavers but doesn't break as her volatile situation at home and the foreboding state of the nation grow more ominous.
Vera, or Faith
Shteyngart's wry humour and literary chops are in fine form here. In describing a room in the apartment, he writes 'There was a total of seven enormous bookcases lining the living room, all attesting to Daddy's presence amid the intellectual 'caste'… Daddy liked his books in alphabetical order, but before big events Anne Mom paid Vera ten dollars to reorganize the books in such a way that authors 'of color' and women were 'front and center' at eye level.'
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The tone throughout is a touch softer and the humour less barbed relative to Shteyngart's other novels — a sensible choice given we're following a somewhat naive child rather than than author's typically grumpy middle-aged literary type.
Influence-wise there's a tip of the hat to Vladimir Nabokov here; the title alludes to 1969's Ada, or Ardor, where the reader meets a girl of a similar age to Vera (which is also the first name of Nabokov's wife). In recent interviews, Shteyngart has also referenced re-watching Kramer vs. Kramer, and wanting to do something similar but from a child's perspective along the lines of Henry James' 1897 volume What Maisie Knew.
Regarding Vera's diary of unknown words and phrases: Every time a 'grown-up' term appears in the text, it's marked out by quotation marks. And while the odd such mark here and there wouldn't be an issue, it's not uncommon to find upwards of a half-dozen per page, which took this reader briefly out of the narrative flow on more than one occasion. (As an example: Go back and note the three terms in quotation marks in the previously quoted passage in this review. In one sentence.)
This minor quibble aside, Vera, or Faith's endearing 10-year-old hero manages to wins over the reader with her curiosity, her sensitivity and her smarts, with Shteyngart offering a glimmer of hope for humanity in ever-darkening times through his young protagonist.
Free Press books editor Ben Sigurdson relates a bit too much to the grumpy, middle-aged literary type.
Ben SigurdsonLiterary editor, drinks writer
Ben Sigurdson is the Free Press's literary editor and drinks writer. He graduated with a master of arts degree in English from the University of Manitoba in 2005, the same year he began writing Uncorked, the weekly Free Press drinks column. He joined the Free Press full time in 2013 as a copy editor before being appointed literary editor in 2014. Read more about Ben.
In addition to providing opinions and analysis on wine and drinks, Ben oversees a team of freelance book reviewers and produces content for the arts and life section, all of which is reviewed by the Free Press's editing team before being posted online or published in print. It's part of the Free Press's tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press's history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.
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