“Spectacular.”—NPR • “Uproariously funny.”—The Boston Globe • “An artistic triumph.”—San Francisco Chronicle • “A novel in which comedy and pathos are exquisitely balanced.”—The Washington Post • “Shteyngart’s best book.”—The Seattle Times The bestselling author of Super Sad True Love Story returns with a biting, brilliant, emotionally resonant novel very much of our times.NAMED ONE OF THE TEN … emotionally resonant novel very much of our times.
NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE AND MAUREEN CORRIGAN, NPR’S FRESH AIR AND NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • NPR • The Washington Post • O: The Oprah Magazine • Mother Jones • Glamour • Library Journal • Kirkus Reviews • Newsday • Pamela Paul, KQED • Financial Times • The Globe and Mail
Narcissistic, hilariously self-deluded, and divorced from the real world as most of us know it, hedge-fund manager Barry Cohen oversees $2.4 billion in assets. Deeply stressed by an SEC investigation and by his three-year-old son’s diagnosis of autism, he flees New York on a Greyhound bus in search of a simpler, more romantic life with his old college sweetheart. Meanwhile, his super-smart wife, Seema—a driven first-generation American who craved the picture-perfect life that comes with wealth—has her own demons to face. How these two flawed characters navigate the Shteyngartian chaos of their own making is at the heart of this piercing exploration, a poignant tale of familial longing and an unsentimental ode to America.
LONGLISTED FOR THE CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE IN FICTION
“The fuel and oxygen of immigrant literature—movement, exile, nostalgia, cultural disorientation—are what fire the pistons of this trenchant and panoramic novel. . . . [It is] a novel so pungent, so frisky and so intent on probing the dissonances and delusions—both individual and collective—that grip this strange land getting stranger.”—The New York Times Book Review
“Shteyngart, perhaps more than any American writer of his generation, is a natural. He is light, stinging, insolent and melancholy. . . . The wit and the immigrant’s sense of heartbreak—he was born in Russia—just seem to pour from him. The idea of riding along behind Shteyngart as he glides across America in the early age of Trump is a propitious one. He doesn’t disappoint.”—The New York Times
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This is a novel that seems to have been created in real time, reflecting with perfect comedy and horrible tragedy exactly what America feels like right this minute. As I read Lake Success, I barked with laughter, at the same time wincing in pain. Gary Shteyngart has held up a mirror to American culture that is so accurate, and so devastating, that it makes you want to break the mirror right over your own head. I mean this as a good thing. The novel is stupendous.
I love Gary Shteyngart’s writing. He is a master at characterization. This book takes you on a literal road trip through America, and all sides of this country. It wasn’t as humorous as I am accustomed to from this author, but like his other books, so on the nose when looking at our society. He is always an interesting read
Lake Success is Gary Shteyngart, so you already know it’s the funniest book you’ll read all year. But the surprise here is the novel’s epic sweep, its melancholy resonance. What begins as a rollicking and zinger-filled road trip sneakily deepens into a poignant tale of a man trying to outrace his problems. I was utterly floored by Shteyngart’s staggeringly beautiful denouement.
Lake Success takes us on an unforgettable road trip through an America that’s ominously divided, wildly diverse, and weirdly familiar. Gary Shteyngart writes about money and marriage with brutal honesty, virtuoso wit, and stubborn compassion for his deeply flawed but still somehow lovable characters.
In Lake Success, Gary Shteyngart hears America perfectly: its fatuity, its poignant lament, its boisterous self-loathing. Its heartbeat. Reading him sometimes makes me want to scream—with recognition and with pure hilarity.
Horrible. Not funny at all.
Great read. Don’t miss it!
Easily read, strange tale, not my normal topic, not quite sure what the point was to the story line, read it and see what you think.
A funny book that pokes fun at our current economic and political mess.
I’ve not read any previous Gary Shteyngart books, but purchased this one based on the recommendation of Richard Russo, whose work I’ve read and largely enjoyed, some of it quite a lot.
I didn’t particularly enjoy this book. I didn’t have quite the scathing reaction as some of the more seething lower-star reviewers, and clearly Shteyngart is a facile, skilled, occasionally brilliant writer; my biggest problem is I didn’t have much empathy for the protagonist, which is challenging when the bulk of the book is comprised of his first-person perspective on a whole spectrum of wildly and largely unrelatable experiences.
There are specific elements within the story that create a slate of themes: the world of hedge funds, the bludgeons and nuances of having an autistic child, the minutia of artisanal watches (I appreciated their use as a metaphorical device), the ramblings of a basically psychotic road trip, but while each had merit, I found none ingratiated me to the main character, making the read a sort of detached exercise. In fact, I didn’t even come away with a visualization of what Barry looked like, which is really unusual, making him seem like a cipher.
The other characters had moments that glimmered or popped, but there, too, they seemed to largely be canvases for Barry’s unfolding drama. Other than his father-in-law, and Jonah, the older autistic boy met on the road, I wasn’t drawn in, which made me less interested in how their stories unfolded.
The delusional, narcissistic drive that compels the narrative forward from Barry’s point of view becomes problematic if we don’t relate enough to him. I didn’t, emotionally, analytically, or from any point of world view.
I did, however, relate wildly to the thread about the gut-punch of Trump’s 2016 victory… felt every moment of that particular pain. 🙂
There was a measure of redemption at the end, which was lovely, but still, I remained too detached to feel much. Well written, with interesting elements, but a book that will likely be an acquired taste. And, by the way, I didn’t find it particularly funny… maybe it’s me! 🙂
Such a funny and endearing novel.
A great read. Not his best, but his best is a really high bar to reach.
In many ways, this book qualifies as a tragedy. There’s the hero, a wildly successful Hedge Fund billionaire, with several fatal flaws. He wants to love his handicapped son, and to be present in his life, but he just can’t. So he takes a trip across the country on a Greyhound bus, looking for a son he can love. Many adventures later, he goes home to face the music…and the Justice Department. This is an excellent read. I recommend it highly.
Well, once again I am in violent disagreement with the majority of critics, whose reviews place this sprawling, hilarious and brilliant novel somewhere between “sturdy” and “tepid.” It’s impossible not to admire Shteyngart’s unique combination of wit, humanity and satiric bite (I don’t think anyone else does this as well as he does), so you can’t exactly pan the book. But I think most of the reviews are missing at least part of the point, by seeing “Master of the Universe NY financier gets his comeuppance” as the heart of this latest work – the Bonfire of the Vanities for the age or Trump. As with Shteyngart’s other work of genius (Super Sad True Love Story, and if you haven’t read that, go do so right now … go ahead, I’ll wait), this book is great because it’s actually smaller than its ambitions. Yes, it’s an On The Road paean that literally covers the whole country, with characters that are exactly the opposite of what Entertainment Weekly said (they call them caricatures, I say they are multi-dimensional and surprisingly real), but to my mind, the emotional center of the book is the protagonist’s (Barry’s) (non) relationship with his autistic son, which is heartbreaking because he wants so badly to connect but has no idea how. I didn’t see one reviewer note the similarity between Barry’s behavior and his son’s autism – Barry himself is clearly on the spectrum and could relate to his son in many ways if only he could see how. This is very similar to SSTLS’s Lenny and his girlfriend, and with equally bittersweet results. The observations about the America Barry sees on his journey (and the one he flees from in NY) are hysterically spot on, and so cleverly expressed that I’m going to start reading GS’s books with a notebook in hand, to jot down the best ones. Add to that the sense of impending dread as the nomination and then election of Trump marches inevitably on, and you have a towering novel with scope both large and human. As you can probably tell, I just loved this book.
Grade: A
A book for the Trump era – grappling with our current challenges with humor and emotion. Bonus: watches!!
I think Lake Success is a lot like The Nix. They are certainly different, but they both have a journey. There are a lot of details packed in it too. I felt like I was riding that bus along with Barry.
Gary Shteyngart has given us a trip through the American wasteland—from the people who have too little to the people who have too much. Incredibly smart, incredibly funny, incredibly tragic, and therefore incredibly human, this is the perfect novel for these dysfunctional times.