Well, I did it: I read one of the first works of “Pandemic Fiction” by a North American author. Too soon, you ask, for any author to do justice to the subject? Too soon to read about the last two complex and challenging years, laced with so much tragedy, especially as we’re not exactly out of the woods yet? I wondered too. I’m happy to report that, for me, at least, Our Country Friends, by Gary Shteyngart came at the right time, couched in the right storyline and narrative style.
With the book’s sections divided into “Acts,” nuanced characterization, and intriguing setting, a ramshackle estate on the outskirts of New York City, referred to in the novel as a Russian “dacha,” Our Country Friends alludes to classic plays by the great Russian writer, Anton Chekov. Like the players in Chekov’s play Uncle Vanya, Shteyngart’s characters find themselves suspended in a kind of limbo due to political and social circumstances beyond their control. When Sasha Senderovksy, the floundering Russian American author who owns the "dacha," invites friends, old and new, to retreat from the pandemic-ridden city and take sanctuary with his family of three, long-established relationships and personal situations begin to shift and change, afflicted by sudden love and long-overdue conflict.
This is a novel that balances both ribald humor and profound melancholy. It astutely explores inequalities of race and class, technological control and the power that social media can hold, political division, and cultural decline. The prose shines, and the plot proceeds with real momentum. I’m amazed Gary Shteyngart pulled all of this off with such grace and compassion. Turns out I didn’t know I needed the catharsis of a really good novel about the pandemic, but sure enough, I did.