Book review: Super Sad True Love Story

Spoilers below, obviously.

Super Sad True Love Story (SSTLS), by Gary Shteyngart, pitches as an absurdist view of the future turned dystopic.

At least, that's what I thought when I first read the book, which featured a population of various ages all seemingly addicted to phone-like devices around their necks, while being constantly obsessed with their own health, popularity ratings and youthfulness.

When you take a good hard look around the planet, you can see that SSTLS has become much less of an absurdist take on the world than you might originally think. Some elements of the book now seem almost prophetic.

Story gist

The main character, a poor schmuck named Lenny, is an aging bachelor that can't quite seem to figure it out. He becomes obsessed with a girl younger than him. They aren't compatible, we quickly discover, but we can't look away. Train wrecks are horrible, but after you've lived through one or seen enough of them, they're fascinating, so we read on.

We watch Lenny as he navigates this odd reality where the super rich pay exorbitant amounts of money to try and extend their youth. The population as a whole is so self-obsessed that they barely seem to realize the oppressive government regime slowly creeping in on them. Even near the climax of the book, where a group of Lenny's friends are prettymuch evaporated by a government kill squad that rose to power through a US trade war with China, the outlook for the population remains bleak; they're still on their apparats, clicking away at their version of Facebook (GlobalTeens).

At first, you might feel sorry for Lenny. His girlfriend cheats on him with his boss and mentor. Some of his friends die. His parents are overbearing. He has no backbone. He is, ultimately, able to write a good story about everything that happened to him (not like it matters - world's going to shit anyway). Feeling sorry for him won't last long.

By the end of the book, I found myself hating all of the characters. Not in how they were written (no no, the writing was fine), but in what they were. Horrible, self-obsessed grown up children.

The characters

Everyone in this book appears to be a bunch of lemmings, following the leader wherever they may go, easily buying into the lies of society promising a bright future if they just stay on track a bit longer. At the start of the novel, this seems kind of funny, endearing, or even cute. It also has some kinky perks. The clothing line for good looking females is onion skin (see-through). Everyone's little device (apparats, IIRC) display the wearer's fuckability rating compared to others in the room, as others rate them live. Any confident guy or girl in the future with a high enough rating could have themselves a lot of fun, one might think. Those that don't score as high on the ratings scale, though (like Lenny), well ... they'd have less fun.

You can't blame them, because those that don't stick in line end up not lasting too long. Either they get shunned by the population, killed by the government (those little apparats do more than just report your fuckability ratings), or wise up and get out of town. The population, for all intents in purposes, are like cows waiting in line to be slaughtered. Cows are cute. They're curious little creatures. I like cows - but they get eaten.

Lenny, somehow, manages to make it to the end. Instead of trying to find eternal life like some of the other rich people, he makes the smart choice and chooses to wait for death.

Themes

Sexuality, narcissism, classism, age and race all play parts in the running themes throughout the book. At the end, I didn't really get the impression that the characters learned how to be better people in every way, but I did get the impression that some of them were at least moving in the right direction.

Conclusion

This book, in 2017, is less of an absurd story and more of a cautionary tale. In a world where our insurance companies utilize health data from our smart watches, and our social feeds are able to hijack our browsers and gain insights about our shopping habits and other assorted kinks, we're slowly moving towards living the life described in SSTLS. It's only a matter of time before the rich start harvesting teenage blood to try and get rid of those grey hairs.

I'd rate this book a 6/10 or 7/10.

If you read this book, comment below. Let me know if you agree or disagree with what I wrote above, or if you have any big points/take-aways from the novel.