Fans of The Virgin Suicides should try Of A Boy, by Australian author Sonya Hartnett. It has the same combination of dreamy prose, suburban angst and high tragedy. This novella has won numerous awards, including the Commonwealth Writer's Prize, as well as being shortlisted for the 2003 Miles Franklin Award. For me it was all over a little too soon, and some of the narratives and themes left a little too "dangly" as they say. Well, as I say, anyway. Speaking of which, I didn't mention in yesterday's post, but The Skin I Live In has a similarly lackluster, "modern" ending. So too does IQ84 for that matter. It must be a thing.
This is not the best book to read at the start of The Year of the Apocalypse. Shteyngart paints America's end of days with cutting satire. The revolution will be televised, by permanently "on" video bloggers no less. This is a world where people go to bars to compare stats ("likability" being one measurement) rather than chat; where immigrants with poor credit ratings are deported and the bumbling American president kowtows to the Bank of China.
It's also not the best thing to read while detoxing all those New Years Eve bevvies. Youth is everything in Super Sad True Love Story, or at least it is to the book's protagonist, Lenny Abramov. He works shilling immortality to the rich.All of it rings very true, especially the constant updates about worker moods (although how these are decided is never explained), not to mention people's disgust at the the unhealthy. It's a vision more realistic than, say, Jennifer Egan's toddler ruled America in A Visit From the Goon Squad.
Also, with it's combination of pornography and news - one gay blogger delivers news of mass protests while getting "reamed" on a luxury yacht - is reminiscent of Southland Tales, the 2006 mega-bomb by Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly. FYI it features Sarah Michelle Gellar as a porn-star/commentator.
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