Gary Shteyngart has written another great book, and this one echoes our shared experience of 2020, but not in a hastily-written, rushed-to-press way. Rather, "Our Country Friends" channels and pays homage to the world of Chekhov's plays, most particularly "Uncle Vanya" with shades of "Cherry Orchard." Like Chekhov, Shteyngart gives us characters of great depth, nearly all of them with firm roots in other cultures. He skillfully weaves present and past to give us completely realized, sadly flawed characters, most of whom know they're messed up... sometimes.

Russian-born writer/writing professor Sasha and his Russian-born psychologist wife Masha own a sort of upstate compound, far enough north of Manhattan to be in right-wing territory, but near enough to be costly to maintain. When COVID hits, they assemble their long-time friends and parcel out the bungalows, sharing meals, memories, beds, and Sasha and Masha's adopted Korean daughter, who has behavioral issues and an obsession with a Korean boy band. Then there is "the Actor," never named, but understood to be a most handsome man. Sasha needs the Actor to commit to making a tv pilot, or he may lose the dacha. As in Chekhov's "Seagull," the addition of a good-looking, highly-sexual male force to the "family" shifts every relationship in the group. It even changes the compound's relationship to the community it is in, but not of.

Part of the achievement of "Our Country Friends" is that COVID is a fact of the characters' lives, but it is a catalyst for the story, not the story itself. That is why this novel will be around long after the plague porn books of the moment are forgotten. (It would also make an excellent film.)

One leaves "Our Country Friends" wanting to know what's next for Sasha and Masha, Karen, Dee, Ed, and Nat. The Actor? Meh. Not so much. As it should be.

Read it.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House in exchange for my honest review. This book will be published November 2, 2021.

I was SO EXCITED to read this book, especially after reading a 5 star review from an author I follow. The description sounded so good…

I was tempted to quit about 25% in but felt obligated to finish so I could review it properly. I loved the premise but I was thoroughly bored. I didn’t care about any of the characters. Although some of the sentences were quite eloquent, I really can’t stand the super long, run-on sentences that last a whole paragraph.

This was my first book by this author and despite his numerous awards, it will probably be my last. Book would be best for existing fans of this author.

Review also posted on GoodReads.

I was first introduced to this author with Lake Success so I knew I wanted to read this one! Initially it was hard to get into. but I think that was me with all the pandemic conditions. I knew I would like (or not) the characters as Shteyngart always flushes them out and weaves a story that is magical in its realism and poignancy. In this novel, friends convene when invited to Sasha and Masha's home. Each of the guests has his or her own story to tell and much is revealed through the events that happen as the book goes on. Characters feel real and many themes are explored. Waiting eagerly for his next one!

Gary Shteynart’s <i>Our Country Friends</i> is a full-on pandemic novel, born and reflective of the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown. Shteyngart locates the action in the Berkshires, with a Shteyngartian cast of two married Russian emigres (Sasha and Masha); their Harbin-born daughter; mutual friends of many years Karen Cho, Vinod Mehta, and Ed Kim; Dee Cameron, a former writing student of Sasha’s and a stand-out beauty; and The Actor. Dee’s now a popular essayist: <i>”Her essays were the equivalent of a new prisoner coming up to the toughest inmate in the can and slugging them right in the face. She wrote with a disdain for weak-bellied sentiment, mixed in with tough-love observations about the social class that had recently welcomed her into their messy brownstones.”</i> Sasha’s invited them to shelter from and wait out the pandemic on his Berkshires compound, with its five themed guest cottages. <i>”People were dying in the city. Some more than others. The virus had roamed the earth but had chosen to settle down there, just as the parents of Masha, [Sasha] Senderovsky, Karen, and Vinod had chosen it four decades ago as a place to escape the nighttime reverberations of Stalin and Hitler, of partition and Partition, of the pain that radiated not in distant memory but cracked outright from their own fathers’ hands. / Catching a [cell phone] signal in the main hosue, the bungalow colonists learned of what was happening a hundred and twenty miles down the river, and they felt many things, but mostly they felt guilt.”</i>

Sasha hopes to reinvigorate his flagging finances and career by convincing The Actor to collaborate on and collaborate on a script; Vinod hopes to fulfill his long unrequited love for Karen and to launch his unpublished novel; Karen hopes to fascinate Sasha and Masha’s socially awkward and isolated pre-teen daughter Nat; and Ed and The Actor both lust after Dee. Sasha’s inviting The Actor is purely transactional: <i>”Of course, someone else was coming, too. Someone who was not a friend. Someone who made Senderovsky, already a drinker, drink more.”</i> And Shteyngart conveys why Sasha greets The Actor with mixed emotions: <i>”I’ve been rereading Odysseus this morning,’ The Actor said. Oh no, Senderovsky thought. ‘I was thinking about my own commonalities with Odysseus.’”</i> All the while, Masha, a psychiatrist, struggles to maintain her now virtual psychiatric practice and to keep the compound COVID-free: <i>”They force me to be somebody I’m not, Masha thought. They mistake my caring for authoritarianism, and then I have no choice but to become Stalin in an apron. But what option do I have if I’m to keep these cretins from getting sick?”</i> And as Sasha welcomes Vinod to the compound: <i>”Senderovsky spread out his arms. ‘Can’t hug,’ he said. And, just to warn you, Masha’s gone all epidemiological.’ ‘She is a doctor,’ Vinod said.”</i>.

<i>Our Country Friends</i> feels initially like a too-obvious Chekhovian set-piece. But Shteyngart’s deft characterizations of New York ethnic intellectuals in their middle age and his hit-the-mark humor transforms <i>Our Country Friends</i> from what could have been heavy-handed caricature to warm and affecting portraits of his characters and their long friendships. This is a comedy of manners, a Berkshire drawing room comedy, but also true-to-life reportage on living through the frights and fears of 2020. Here Sasha stocks up on liquor: <i>”Deep in the sacristy, [Sasha] Senderovsky picked out an eighteen year-old bottle of something beyond his means, two bottles each of cognac and rye, and, to show his frivolous side, schnapps and a strangle single malt from the Tyrol. The proprietor, a shaggy Anglo with a rosacea nose peeking out from his loosely worn mask, looked very pleased as he rang up the many purchases, his fingers clad in black disposable gloves. ‘Just got a call from the state,’ he said to Senderovsky. ‘They might shut me down any day now as nonessential.’ Senderovsky sighed and bought and extra case of the Riesling and two bottles of an artisanal gin he had never hear of. He could picture Ed pursing his lips and pronouncing it ‘drinkable.’ When the final bill, adding up to just over four digits, meandered out of the machine in many long spurts, Senderovsky’s hand could barely slalom through his signature. A special occasion, he consoled himself.”</i>

<i>Our Country Friends</i> proves once again that Gary Shteyngart is much more than a comic novelist. While Shteyngart populates his novels with superficially stock ethnic characters, he animates each characters with fully independent and universal identities. <i>Our Country Friends</i> is both a fine pandemic novel and also a fine novel. This is the right novel at the right time: 4.5 stars.

Thanks to NetGalley and Random House for providing me with an ARC e-copy.

Shteyngart writes horrible people so very well. None of his characters seemed redeeming (or redeemable) at first pass, but he peeled back the layers so deftly, I was hooked and rooting for most of them. At first I thought the subject matter was too soon--we're not out of this pandemic yet. But I really wanted to see where they ended up and I wasn't disappointed. The character of Dee Cameron wasn't even too on the nose about The Decameron--and in fact very funny.

I get really happy whenever I pick up a new book from Gary Shteyngart, because I know there's a treat in store. And with Our Country Friends, he has more than delivered.

This novel of eight friends coming together in the Berkshires during COVID is so imaginative and spellbinding and sexy and lusty and heartbreaking and life affirming.

Thank you NetGalley for letting me review this book.

By my standards, Gary Shytengart’s latest offing, #Our Country Friends is, quite simply, BRILLIANT ! Starting with it’s perfect opening sentence, #OurCountryFriends never takes its foot off the narrative accelerator while it never makes a wrong turn creating a glorious reading journey. To compare it to other classic works of art isn’t necessary to savor it plus Shytengart does that himself within the confines of the novel. In case you don’t know, G.S. is Russian born who immigrated with his parents to The United States forty two years ago when he was seven, and has succeeded in becoming one of this country’s most prized writers. That’s about all his background you need for a hint where #OurCountryFriends is headed. At the risk of sounding obtuse, I might describe the book as a bit of science fiction taking place in the past , where the past is 2020. In an attempt to escape from from The Virus ( never referred to by its name, making it all the creepier ) Sasha, an author/landowner invites his closest friends from high school/college to his country estate two hours north of NYC. What ensues is funny, farcical, touching, heartwarming - in other words, many of the emotions that course through a group of friends attempting to avoid extinction. To say that #OurCountryFriends is a timely rumination on life today would be doing it a disservice. Instead I would call it a 21st century time capsule that stands alone in its reflections on Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow. Don’t miss it !

Our Country Friends is a book that I wish I had been reading with a book club. There are so many interesting topics subtly and not so subtly covered in the story. After I was done reading, I spent some time thinking about what this book was trying to convey to its readers. The characters of the story were all flawed and human in their failings. The interrelationships of the group were complex. One of the things that this story captured was the initial period when the country was isolating . The unknown of how to react, how long this would last, what our lives should be were portrayed as well as the monotony of day-to-day life at times. My only complaint would be about the dream/hallucination sequences. I was left feeling that I should have taken away an important revelation, but I was just confused.

Thank you Netgalley and Random House for the arc. This is my honest review.

It is March 2020 and the frightening pandemic that is about to seize the whole world is just gaining momentum. Eight people leave New York City to isolate themselves upstate at an enclave of cabins owned by Sasha Senderovsky, a Russian-born novelist of middling renown. All eight people, including his wife Masha and adopted daughter Natasha, are connected to Sasha in some way and a few of them have been friends for most of their lives. Once in the country, the colonists (as they call themselves) pass about six months in varying levels of tranquility and conflict, as myriad romances spring up and die, old wounds and insecurities are reopened, professional lives are challenged, and, most of all, boredom sets in. The end of the story finds a depleted group returning to the city to try to reestablish their lives in what will amount to the new normal.

Our Country Friends strives to be a lot of things at once: a new take on the Russian novel (indeed, it is billed as being “Chekov on the Hudson”), a modern version of the “escape the plague with humor and style” tale established in the The Decameron about 700 years ago, a fresh look at the bonds that tie people together or split them apart, as well as an examination of the complex nature of both loving and betraying those closest to us. To some extent, author Gary Shteyngart succeeds in weaving these diverse threads together into a reasonably coherent story and his writing is frequently engaging, if not quite as funny as it was probably intended to be. Still, this was not a book that resonated strongly with me and I found myself having to press to the end as not enough really happens in the narrative to justify its length.

The main problem with the novel is that while the setting is certainly universal—we all had to live through exactly the same crisis, after all—the characters are not. In fact, their various maladies, neuroses, and past experiences were so specific that I suspect only a few readers will find them to be highly relatable. This was not, then, an all-encompassing tale capable of binding together everyone’s own experience during the pandemic. Also, there were loose plot lines in the novel that were quite distracting, such as the menacing pickup truck that frequently appears but is never fully explained—perhaps the author simply chose to ignore the dramatic principle of Chekhov’s gun—and The Actor, the character most responsible for bringing tension to the collective, just disappears without his story being resolved. Consequently, this is not a book that I can recommend without considerable reservation.

This clever, often amusing, and touching story is written in the style of a Russian novel with a very decided flavor of “The Big Chill” but set in 2020 during the pandemic.

Alexander Senderovsky (known as Sasha), 48, has invited his best friends to his “House on the Hill” - a main house and five bungalows on a hundred or so acres in upstate New York - to stay during the pandemic. (He also refers to it as “the Sasha Senderovsky Bungalow Colony.”). He, his wife Masha, and their hyper, possibly “on the borderlands of autism” adopted Asian daughter Natasha (“Nat”) who is “eight going on eighty,” welcome a guest for each bungalow: Ed Kim, from a wealthy Korean family and who traveled incessantly because “velocity was his friend”; Vinod Mehta, who had lived with Sasha for a decade beginning in college; Karen Cho, a software designer who was a friend of Sasha’s from high school; Dee Cameron, a former student of Sasha’s in his writing workshop; and “the Actor” - someone slated to star in a miniseries based on one of Sasha's books, and of whom everyone was in awe. Unlike the others, he doesn’t stay the whole time, and that was a good thing. As Nat observed: “After the Actor had left, everyone behaved differently, more kindly, less self-consciously, as if this was just any other summer but with blue surgical masks and spent bottles of hand sanitizer littering the side of the road.”

This group of mostly second generation immigrants make up, as Sasha calls them in a reference to the fake inclusiveness of the former USSR, “the House of People’s Friendship.”

The author shows the bonds among the people in this group developing and morphing through the lens of a number of issues that affect them, including the prospect of illness and death, success and failure, the lure of dreams and the balm of reality, love and sex, immigration, racism, the families you inherit, and the families you make. They all became closer to one another. As Sasha says to one of them, “How are we not going to be friends? What would be the point of anything?”

Discussion: In the end, Shteyngart succeeds with his poignant saga in the way great Russian writers did, as author Francine Prose wrote about Gogol: by making the individual seem universal, and by “the force, the directness, the honesty and accuracy with which they depicted the most essential aspects of human experience.” She adds that great Russian writers “persuade us that there is such a thing as human nature, that something about the human heart and soul transcends the surface distinctions of nationality, social class and time.” Shteyngart too has summoned timeless themes to create unforgettable characters, even though they are at the same time every man, and every woman.

The writing is excellent, full of trenchant insights uttered by the characters about each other, as this passage with Masha thinking about Ed: “Ed reminded her of her husband’s parents. Talking with them was like dealing with a smiling adversary who kept a handful of poisoned toothpicks in his pocket. Every time you let your guard down, there would be a sharp prick at your haunches.” Sasha, moreover, is always thinking like a writer, so he evaluates what is happening around him in that way, as when he shows Dee to her bungalow and she excuses herself to go to the not-quite-soundproof bathroom: “Student peeing, he thought to himself, not lasciviously, but filing it away for some possible future reference.”

Evaluation: This story is not to be missed, for the writing, the insights into human nature and family, or even if one is just looking for exceptional pandemic fiction.

Thanks to Netgalley and Random House for the ebook. This is one of my favorite authors and this a thrilling comedy and also the first fiction that deals with the Covid 19 outbreak. Eight people, some lifelong friends sprinkled in with strangers, are trying to get through the pandemic in a house and a series of adjoining huts in the Hudson Valley. It’s the author’s strongest homage to Chekhov as we see these eight characters couple off into surprising pairs and find long held secrets revealed over the uncertain six months that the book portrays.

I received Our Country Friends as part of a NetGalley giveaway.

At the onset of COVID-19, a Russian-American novelist hosts a collection of friends and acquaintances on his rambling but derelict estate. As the group copes with the realities of life in the spring and summer of 2020, they also develop their own relationships amongst themselves. Love is found and lost, opportunities come and go, and secrets and betrayals come to life over the course of six months that will change the 'colonists' forever.

I wasn't quite sure how to feel about Our Country Friends. I enjoyed the main thrust of the story, as it's one of the first mainstream novels to tackle COVID as a subject matter, but often the narrative takes off on wild flights of fancy that I wasn't a huge fan of. The end, especially, which is just a series of extended dream sequences, was a slog for me. I'm not a huge fan of magical realism, and that's what the plot felt it was veering into with some frequency.

Gary Shteyngart is truly one of the greatest humor fiction writers writing today. This novel is thrilling in its’ originality and all around fizziness. I could not put this book down. Bravo a million times.

I smile whenever I pick up a new book from Gary Shteyngart, because I know there's a treat in store. And with Our Country Friends, he has more than delivered. While his Lake Success was a truly original take on the tRump administration, here he approaches the year 2020 with Chekhovian flair. Alexander (Sasha) Senderovsky invites a curated selection of friends to his upstate compound that consists of five bungalows and a main house, a group comprised mostly of second generation immigrants -- from Korea, India and, naturally being Shteyngart, Russia. The one exception is the catalyst for disaster, an AList actor expected to star in a miniseries based on one of Sasha's books. What struck me were the similarities between author and character, rendering this almost a work of metafiction, sharing his innermost emotions about the pandemic, the death of George Floyd, the experiences of teaching writing at a prestigious college. The writing is superb, the situations, truly heartfelt. The resolutions unexpected and gut wrenching. Kudos.

Also, as I've been present at several events where he has appeared, I am hoping that when this book is published in November, he will be able to go on the road again. I'd love to see him in person discussing this book.

Set in the time of Covid-19, the bungalow colony on the property of Sasha and Masha seemed to be a refuge from lockdown conditions, but it is not that easy to escape from problems, especially for the characters in this ode to a Russian novel.

I’m a fan of Gary Shteyngart’s writing. His characters can be hapless, self-important, cruel, and infuriating but this is essentially a playful romp plus collateral damage.

Capturing the zeitgeist of these troubled times, Shteygart has created a saga in the Russian tradition. Set in the USA, this tale of immigration, the pandemic, and a cast of characters I can’t even describe, it’s a tragi-comic snapshot of a moment in history that many say is unprecedented. Almost painful to read, but worthwhile nonetheless.

I'm not entirely sure what a "Russian Novel: is, like, as a trope. Probably because I make it a few pages past the opening patronymics and then I get bored. This novel was kinda like that.

I didn’t care for this book so I didn’t finish it. This is also the second title i have not finished.