“She hated that happiness and sadness were always forming a pretzel.”
The irrepressible Gary Shteyngart -- author of "Our Country Friends," among other works -- pulls zero punches in his latest novel, which takes on nativism, futurism, border repression, and other societal landmines. "Vera, or Faith" feels ripped from the headlines, while also feeling at least a little bit autobiographical.
“‘Make-work,’ Daddy called her homework, derisively, and it mostly was a continuation of the school day, the careful recording of numbers, letters, and concepts that would vaunt them into the appropriate high school, the appropriate college, and, for those whose families had recently arrived, into the ‘gleaming anus of late capitalist society’ (Daddy, of course, for which he was severely ‘censured’ by Anne Mom).”
The first three-quarters of this short book focus on inanity, irony, and pure humor to depict the life of 10-year-old Vera, her Russian immigrant father, her stepbrother, and her "Anne Mom." Her biological mother -- "Mom Mom" -- is a mysterious figure who eventually captivates precocious Vera's imagination, leading to a devastating conclusion.
“Anne Mom wanted a lot of structure, but Daddy said childhood ‘should just happen,’ like it had happened to him, and that until you went to grad school ‘nothing really mattered,’ it was all just a ‘neoliberal frog march of the damned.’”
Powered by a heart-breaking, clever, and emotional ending, "Vera, or Faith" is a shattering reminder that adolescence has never been more fraught, and contemporary politics has made heritage both dangerous and contextual.
Maybe, just maybe, it takes a Russian immigrant to write the ideal post-ICE-takeover novel. Shteyngart has made a compelling case for that here.
“‘I’m only ten,’ she repeated. It was what her mother wanted to hear and just maybe it was true.”
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