Super Sad True Love Story

Gary Shteyngart's Super Sad True Love Story is a romance set in a dystopian near future. Lenny Abramov is a nearly forty year old salesman for life extension services, which promises immortality to to High Net Worth Individuals (HNWI's). Yet he has little luck in Italy, except that he meets Eunice Park, a second generation Korean American in her mid twenties. She finds him endearing, despite calling him "nerdface", and he is completely smitten by her. When they return to New York, he pursues her and they become a couple, albeit an awkward couple. He keeps pushing to meet her parents, and she finally relents but introduces him as her roommate. He enthusiastically shows her off to his own parents, retired Russin immigrants.

The romance of Lenny and Eunice takes place against the backdrop of a strange sort of America, where credit poles line the street announcing the credit rating of passers-by, and the Chinese central banker is the most powerful person in the country. The nation is run by the Bipartisan Party, and controlled by a strong American Restoration Authority. American society has become Orwellian, with the eye of Big Brother in the form of a cartoon otter that asks about one's friends and acquaintances, and signs that warn is it a crime to awknowledge their very existence. There is a war in Columbia that no one is sure the cause of, and the soldiers have not gotten their bonuses. Authoritarianism and double-speak have taken over the public discourse, and citizens are trapped in a cycle of borrowing and spending which distracts them from the danger of their own government.

Lenny and Eunice's relationship is fragile. She is shallow and finds his books quaint. He can't quite understand her friends or her lack of ambition. He is eager to please her and do whatever it takes to keep her. Lenny introduces her to his supervisor Joshie, who becomes obsessed with Eunice and her youth. Joshie is in his seventies but determined to stay young through his company's treatments, which he believes will help him achieve immortality. Joshie insinuates himself into Eunice's life and tries to seduce her behind Lenny's back. In many ways he is more suited to her, since they are both shallow and youth-obsessed.

Yet the "super sad" and "true" parts of the story are not so much the romance between the three individuals as the American society that is falling apart around them. Civil liberties are being sold to the corporations, yet Lenny's parents are watching Fox Liberty Prime and worried about gays getting married. People like Lenny are more worried about their bank accounts and becoming LNWI's (Low Net Worth Individuals) like the citizens assembling at the park to protest their treatment. Joshie talks casually about "relocating" the undesirables so that America's new investors could enjoy Manhattan as a HNWI spender's paradise. Lenny seems lost in this rapidly changing world, and is genuinely astonished when his building is taken over by a corporation to be torn down, supposedly because it is in a flood plain.

This novel is a bit different than I expected but I still enjoyed it. The romance between Lenny and Eunice is pretty simple and straightforward, but it speaks volumes about generational differences and how American culture is becoming fragmented and shallow. The two of them have barely anything in common, and their relationship is an analogy for the relationship between generations. Lenny is earnest and sweet; his narrative is told via his diary. Eunice's side of the story is told in her messages to her family and friends, so it is closer to how her generation communicates. The sad, negative vision of America is the main part of the story. We see the country transforming and falling apart, and Lenny's romance with Eunice is a small part of it. A-

The Windup Girl

Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl is set in a dystopian future where genetic engineers are constantly fighting to create foods resistant to diseases that have contaminated the food supply. The Thai refer to the Western peddlars of the latest gene-spliced disease-resistant products as the calorie men, a reference to what is the critical resource in civilization. It is a post-carbon world, where elevators work by groups of ballast men run up the stairs to provide counterweight. Large levees around Bangkok keep the rising sea at bay. The value of life is low.

Anderson Lake is the representative of a calorie company in Thailand. He has taken over a factory building kink springs, a sort of mechanical energy storage device. But that is just a cover: his long term goal is to gain access to the country's seed supply so they can duplicate it. Thailand is run by two competing factions: the Trade Ministry, which promotes imports and foriegn investment, and the Environment Ministry, which controls import to prevent the next disease from ruining all the local crops.

Lake is intrigued when he is at a friend's club and meets Emiko, the title character, who is a Japanese manufactured person. She is designed to have tiny pores for smooth skin, which means she is ill-suited to the hot Thai climate. She is also designed to be subservient and is the perfect servant or prostitute. Not only does she not have any rights, but if the Environment Ministry captures her they would seize her as illegal biological material and mulch her. Lake finds himself becoming attached to Emiko and promises to help her get to a safe haven for windup people.

Lake is helped by his Chinese assistant Hock Seng, but who is secretly plotting to steal the plans for the kink springs and sell them to the biggest gangster in town. Lake also has associates with whom he connives to bring about political instability to further their plans. One of the biggest wild cards is Jaidee, a fervent Environment Ministry officer known as the Tiger. When the Tiger oversteps his bounds and burns entire shipments, it starts a cascade of events that threatens to bring down the Environment Ministry and propel Lake and his associates to a grand success, if they can survive the violence and disease outbreak.

The story is captivating and the language is vivid. There are all sorts of fascinating things about the world that get let out in bits. Megodonts used to provide power, zeppelins used to travel. The characters are well drawn with definite pasts and conflicting goals. Each character has a different view of the strange world and affects the plot in his or her own way. This is a story of personal tragedy, sacrifice, intrigue, and biology, with a bit of violence and sex thrown in. I found it moderately entertaining. B