"In author Gary Shteyngart's sixth novel Vera, or Faith, 10-year-old Vera Bradford-Shmulkin swoops through a moment-to-moment life lived between parenthesis. She keeps word lists-"statuses," "special juice," "pendulous bosom," Nostradamus," "sonorous,"-and a Things I Still Need to Know Diary. Her thoughts are obsessive and subject to multiple "have to's" and "exceptional American" expectations delivered by her parents. She's a wondrous soul looking for connection."
"There are, in her family, a missing Korean birthmother, Mom Mom; her struggling Russian-Jewish father, Daddy; her WASP mother, Anne Mom; and fair-haired Dylan, Vera's half-brother. Cast by them and other characters into a cesspool of anxiety, she undertakes a wildly entertaining and sometimes tragic search for identity and love that is profoundly relevant in today's social media-driven world. (Shteyngart will be in conversation with writer Daniel Handler at JCCSF, Tue/4, 7pm. More info here.)"
""I have had children in my novels before but I've never set a whole book from the perspective of a child. It reminded me of my own childhood quite a bit, the difficulty of making a friend, trying to figure out language (although Vera has the advantage of being born to an English-speaking household).""
Ten-year-old Vera Bradford-Shmulkin records obsessive word lists and a Things I Still Need to Know diary while negotiating constant "have to's" and "exceptional American" parental expectations. Family complexity includes a missing Korean birthmother, a struggling Russian-Jewish father, a WASP mother, and a fair-haired half-brother, producing a cesspool of anxiety. Vera undertakes an entertaining yet tragic search for identity and love, facing humor, irony, violence, racism, and bias around physical differences and neurodiversity. The narrative captures childhood struggle to make friends, learn language, and find connection in a cruel, uncertain, social-media-driven world.
Read at 48 hills
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]