Super Sad True Love Story is a dystopian novel that is fun to read...a slight exaggeration of all of our worst characteristics.

Strangely enough, Super Sad True Love Story is a comic novel about the collapse of the United States. We’re not in a post-apocalyptic future, here, though: there’s been no plague, nuclear weaponry, or alien invasion to wipe us out.

So what happens, then? Well, it’s the economy, stupid (or perhaps the stupid economy), the country’s assets being largely owned by the Chinese and the Norwegians, who are not the most patient of creditors. The government (ostensibly run by the Bipartisan Party) is a totalitarian nightmare. New York City has become a police state, with checkpoints at the bridges and tunnels. Consumerism runs rampant, as everyone carries around a device called an “äppärät,” which broadcasts credit scores (as well as one’s “hotness” quotient) and helpfully compares rankings. Fourth-ugliest man in the bar, anyone?

Lenny Abramov, age 39, son of Russian immigrants, working for Post-Human Services (which promises immortality to its wealthy customers) has fallen in love with Eunice Park, age 24, daughter of Korean immigrants, possessor of useless college degrees in Images and Assertiveness. Both of them are largely oblivious to the increasingly alarming political situation, and both of them are emotionally immature, flawed people, but both of them are also fully realized human characters…suffering, as so many do, through the trials and tribulations of their time.

Shteyngart’s extremely critical here, and also extremely funny, and also extremely sad. Read the novel. You’ll find that the title, despite it being a work of fiction set in the near future, is absolutely on point.

NOVEL: Super Sad True Love Story

AUTHOR: Gary Shteyngart

YEAR OF PUBLICATION: 2010

IMAGE: book cover, Random House