Kepler's 2020 Project in the News:
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Set in a near future Rome and New York City, Gary Shteyngart’s latest novel, Super Sad True Love Story, chronicles the unlikely and poignant love between middle-aged and Jewish Lenny Abramov and twenty-something, Korean-American Eunice Kim. The unrelenting, satirical style perfectly navigates the divide between the two protagonists’ perspectives. Lenny writes in a diary. Eunice prefers the social network GLOBALTEENS. Lenny seems to be a relic from the past, mocked for the endearing habit of reading a book. Eunice is at home in a hyper-digital age. Lenny’s academic (he is a scientist of sorts) observations stand in wonderful contrast to Eunice’s emails and instant messages. Despite the innumerable differences between the two – occasionally obsessive Lenny and youthful and damaged Eunice – they form a close bond that borders on codependency. Shteyngart’s style is colloquial, strikingly well-written, and artful. He waltzes around the double themes of mortality and immortality – Lenny works as a life extension consultant and describes the Pantheon as “the most glorious grave marker to a race of men ever built.” Part Jane Austen and part George Orwell, this is a beautifully ironic and incredibly original novel. -- Laura |
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