Rating: 
Summary: Russianizations
Review: I really enjoyed reading this book although some of it might be a little too cliché. However, it depicts all the crazy russian quirks that ive grown to live with. The ABBA, the criticism, the debauchery, everything. The most prominent aspect of the book is the comic irony and style. Almost every sentence is full of interesting comedic prespectives. Almost liek a ctach-22-esque writing style in which something always comes back from previous pages in order to create a sophisticated type of lunacy. One huge problem- that birthday song in the end sung by Genna the "Cheerless" Cartoon Crocodile is comepletely lost in translation. I almost cried.
Rating: 
Summary: Utterly original and infused with comic lunacy
Review: Gary Shteyngart has written a great first novel, filled with idiosyncratic characters and their over-the-top experiences. With the Russian Debutante's Handbook, he has established himself as a master of social critique and comic lunacy. One of the beauties of this novel is how it skillfully juxtaposes two worlds. The first half of the novel explores the peculiarities of New York City through the eyes of Vladimir Gershkin, an immigrant Russian Jew working as an assimilation facilitator at an immigrant absorption clinic. The second half of the novel follows our hero to the loosely-fictitious eastern European city of Prava, bubbling with the onset of capitalism and infused with comic relief by the budding expat community. Shteyngart, himself a Russian immigrant, ideally trained by his own experience and uniquely equipped with a gift for observation and expression, exposes the hilarious quirks of each world and pokes sharply yet playfully at their shortcomings. Much has been said about Shteyngart's gift for language. It is not an exaggeration to say that one could literally open this book to any page and find an utterly original turn of phrase, or a combination of words that beg you to stop and ponder. This is a truly fresh voice in the literary world.
Rating:
Summary: The Russian Jewish Dave Barry
Review: Absolutely hysterical! The cultural details (gold teeth, ABBA obsessions, leeengthy birthday greetings...) all wrapped up in vivid characters from a NYC dominatrix to Chechen/Georgian/Russian mafiosos leave no room for boredom. The pages turn by themselves as you are transported from NY to Miami (where the Dave Barry influence really kicks in) to the thinly veiled "Prava" (a fictional Prague) with a huge leftover Lenin statue -- well, just the foot. Shteyngart satires American, Jewish, and Eastern European cultures with details that we have always known yet didn't realize could be so funny when exaggerated just so.
Rating: 
Summary: Funny and smart, if somewhat undisciplined
Review: The hero of this comic and somewhat outlandish tale is a young Russian immigrant named Vladimir Girshkin. At the start, he's living in New York's East Village, with his dominatrix girlfriend, when an encounter (via his nowhere job at the Emma Lazarus Immigrant Absorption Society) with a mysterious and somewhat lunatic older Russian man pulls him inadvertently into a series of misadventures. The upshot is that he must flee to Prague to get out of the hot water he's ended up in. Prague in the early 1990s, when the story is set, is hyped as the new Paris, stuffed with young American expats congratulating each other on their mediocre poetry. Girshkin falls in with that scene, but also with Russian gangsters. With the latter group he concocts a wild pyramid scheme to defraud the expats, and meanwhile he romances a Midwestern girl. At times the antics are very funny, and Shteyngart clearly has a comic gift. But often the book kind of sprawls in odd directions, and it really feels too long at 450 pages. The last third especially has the feel of desperate attempts to tie it all up, and leaves the reader wondering if Shteyngart knew where he was going when he started, or just kind of created a scenario and winged it. I bought this after reading a very funny and well-done story by Shteyngart in a magazine, and overall I'd have to say I was a lot more impressed with his talent in a short-story context than in this novel. Still, the book is often witty and at times insightful -- and may be of particular interest to those who remember the Prague Moment -- and the guy definitely has chops. This is his first novel, and he's someone to keep an eye on. A more disciplined book could be a real winner .
Rating:
Summary: Excellent writing, but needs paring down
Review: Dear Mr. Shteyngart:
Thank you for BOTH of your first novels. Unfortunately, the two were joined as (if) a single book, which left me a little confused and, well, exhausted. I prefer the first "book," which is a funny, telling story about a young man's coming-of-age in New York. The second, which recounts the same young man's continuing adventures in Eastern Europe, seems rather aimless and too loopy, causing this reader to lose empathy for and interest in the protagonist. And the Hollywood-happy epilogue feels tacked on and contrived. Still, individual passages are extremely well written. For me the problem lies in structural excess.
Respectfully yours, an admirer
Rating:
Summary: sprawling, splendid novel
Review: I read this book in two days, pausing only for coffee and sustenance. In a world of paper-thin characters in fiction, television movies, how refreshing to have a character as complex as Vladimir Girshkin. He is an immigrant, yes, but there is a little bit of Girshkin in all of us, whether we were born here or not. Like most of us Girshkin dares to dream big, and like most of us he is punished so terribly for his dreams. I can't think of the last time a person so complex could evoke our sympathies and our pity, maybe The Confederacy of Dunces. When the book ends you feel lost in a world that is without Girshkin, and without the narrator's moral clarity. Superb. But a warning. This book is for mature readers only. If you want a modern masterpiece, this is the book for you.
Rating: 
Summary: nabokov-smabokov
Review: Another russploitation piece, comfortably confirming for an average American the age-old stereotypes about "those crazy Russians." Good bathroom reading though! My advice - wait for the paperback.
Rating:
Summary: Clever, witty, and right on
Review: I too was among the thousands who in the late 70's/early 80's immigrated as kids and preteens to the US from various republics of the then-Soviet Union. So in reading Shteyngart's debut, so much struck close to home - from the suburban-bound parents, to the bizarre home remedies ("cupping," mustard compresses), to Soviet kindergartens, to the delicious Russian candy (now faithfully replicated in Brooklyn and adored by my daughters and American friends). So, yes, many of us might have had the content to write this book about the crazy-yet-ordinary adventures of the lovable Vladimir Girshkin, but definitely not the gorgeous command of the language (that's where the Nabokov comparison is right on) and the clever, satirical eye. And, yes, there are some flaws with this first novel, but lack of wit and talent are certainly not among them. I can't wait to see what my zemlyak (fellow countryman) will produce next.
Rating:
Summary: What is so special?
Review: I'm not sure what all the raving is about, but I found the plot and the charachters of the book very ordinary and very thin. Maybe it's because it sticks so close to the truth, and I know the truth already (having VERY similar background with the main charachter). Shteyngart tries to pack the novel with common Russian phrases, dialog, events (maybe to demonstrate to an American reader, but certaintly not for my enteirtainment). Some charachters appear and dissapear, and the hero of the novel keeps flactuating in his own feelings unsure of his own purpose. It's like everyone I know around me - and real life is not always interesting and exotic. Girshkin - a literary icon? Most people I know have better personalities then him. Vladimir doesn't scheme a thing, he's just a pitiful victim of the events, always complaining, but never taking things into his own hands. The ending is a typical American movie scene. Let's add a chase, last minute getaway to it, some bullets, oh and sprinkle with a girl. I'd also get rid of the last chapter completely, or condense it to one paragraph. Why summarize the end when we've already lost the interest? I'm not sure what the whole purpose of the novel was, but it's definitely not a literary genious comparable to Nobakov as some people proclaim. Richest Novel of the Summer? I think not, or otherwise we're really loosing touch with reality here. I know they say - don't judge the book by its cover, but in this case - wow, it has nothing to do with the book (personally I thought I'd read about some Russian girl making it in New York by selling her body - did you?). I know I missed all of the "intelligent", but did I also miss all of the "funny"? Where was that comedy I was supposed to choke on with laughter? Maybe if you haven't seen the world or know of other cultures some things are "funny", but there was not a single hint in the entire book that was supposed to sound comical. I know you're going to mark my review "not helpful", so go ahead, and then go back to watching Lifetime.
Rating:
Summary: The Richest Novel of the Summer
Review: I just finished reading it, and I didn't want it to end. I believe the hero Vladimir Girshkin is going to end up being a literary icon, a household word, like Holden Caufield. Just as you're laughing at Vladimir and his lunatic antics, the sadness of the character cuts through. It's no doubt precisely because of the cutting humor that the more poignant aspects work so well. The cunning, always scheming, riotously funny Vladimir is a lost waif -- an out-of-control product not of his own design, like all of us, but much, much moreso. A childhood wrought from his parents' outlandish ideas of child-rearing (his mother's term of tender endearment is "little failure), compounded by the comical and heartbreaking abuses heaped upon him by both his Eastern European homeland and his immigrant's America, have created a young adult, frenetically driven, bouncing off the walls of his crackpot (yet successful) machinations. He possess nothing resembling an emotional or moral rudder. He is so loveable in his relentless plotting and yet so exasperatingly hateful, that this reader was inclined to simultaneously smack him across the face and cradle him in my arms. As you can tell, I may have crossed the border between character and real person here. To lose oneself so completely in a work of fiction is only possible, of course, thanks to Shteyngart's profound portrayal of his dimensional protagonist, not to mention the absurdist, looney-tunes world the author builds for Vladimir to inhabit. This glorious debut comes as close to perfection as any novel I've read in the past 10 years -- or possibly ever.
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