★★★★☆ | Literary Fiction | Print | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads
Set in a near-future New York City, we follow ten-year-old Vera, an exceptionally gifted yet anxious child, through a dystopian landscape of far-right extremism, absentee parenting, cultural diversity, and hilarious yet ominous technology.
Throughout the novel, Vera’s intelligence allows her to wrestle with dilemmas no ten-year-old should ever have to face alone. My heart broke for this little girl, who, like all of us, just wants to be loved.
Of course, without gravity, everyone in heaven would fall straight to hell, a word Anne Mom did not like. But that’s how the universe worked, Vera thought. You wanted to believe someone was in a pretty place like heaven, but really everybody, herself included, was living in hell.
I did not expect to be as moved as I was by the end of the novel.
As an aside, I was able to attend “pub day” for this book at the 92NY in New York City, where Shteyngart and Amor Towles discussed the book and took questions from an intimate audience. I love New York!
