Rating: 
Summary: life imitates art
Review: I thought this book was hilarious and smart, but at first I suspected it was kind of a flight of fancy on the author's part. I mean an exploding statue of Stalin's foot?! Catalan mafia?! And then I read recently that one of the best scenes in the novel, when Vladimir Girshkin stages a fake naturalization ceremony (for complex reasons), actually happened last month in California. So no matter how wild Russian Debuante's Handbook may seem, the author's devilish sense of humor is not as far off from reality as you may think. I think Shteyngart is the bard of the immigrant experience. He belongs in college curricula dealing with the subject and after the incident in California perhaps the police should read up on the Russian Debutante's Handbook too. A great piece of work.
Rating: 
Summary: laugh till you plotz
Review: Talk about grand comedy. This book feels like it was written a 100 years ago by a Russian Oscar Wilde. Shteyngart has an amazing average, with something like 90% of his jokes hitting the mark and making you crack up hysterically. It ain't perfect, the Prague section was a little too over the top in places, but what do you expect for a first novel? He's joined the ranks of the top writers around right now. Give the man his due.
Rating:
Summary: very cool book
Review: Very simply, this is the best. High literature but also funny, funny stuff. The author doesn't stop for a second to make fun of everything/everyone he can but also to make Vladimir Girshkin a character out of something like Isaac Babel. The parents are a super portrayal or Jewish parents and the one fault of the book is that they are gone too fast (but the mother comes back later). This is like a Russian Woody Allen writing from the heart. If you're going to pick up a fat book this summer, make sure its Handbook. It's also perfect for any Eastern european expat who wants to remember how it was when the curtain fell.
Rating:
Summary: almost perfect
Review: A brilliant, meandering work that could have used a touch more editing toward the end. But let's call it what it is, a gorgeous piece of writing that raises the bar for all the young eastern european fiction that comes out every other week these days. Girshkin, the main protagonist, works because we learn about him slowly, like gathering material for a file, his family, his strange (and very funny) relationship with the many women in his life, his unique identity crisis. We care for him because he's not exactly evil by nature, he's just a lost soul in search of a better future, like the "immigrnants' immigrant" that the author labels him. There are some faults. The second section is about forty or so pages too long and could have easily been cut here or there. But that is certainly not too condemn this author's entire work. And yes to compare someone to Nabokov may seem a little too much after just one novel, but let's see what Shteyngart comes up with next. So I'll give the author five stars with the condition that he practice a little more editing restraint next time. Other than that, I can't wait to read more from this talented writer.
Rating:
Summary: shteyngart is a natural comedian
Review: I have had a similar upbringing as the author. I came to New York when I was young from Russia, and had a similar kind of education and I have to say the author gets the whole thing down right. Not only is he a great writer he has the kind of comic timing that only a good comedian has. The jokes come fast and furious and you just speed through the novel on the humor alone. Not everyone can get this comedy I'm sure but for those who have an open mind this is a trip worth taking (see for example the funny false naturalization ceremony for immigrants, the bonfire of Soviet clothes, etc.) This is the beginning of a great talent worth watching. The last few pages are an intersting way to finish the book because they show us just how sad the hero's story is beneath the laughter.
Rating:
Summary: ingenious and political
Review: I couldn't stop laughing and loving each crazy ingenious sentence. Shteyngart writes like no one else writes. I like especially how he show us the arrogance of both Russian and Americans in his novel and how this is really a novel for the 21 century when only one power is left in the world. Hero Vladimir Girshkin can not find a home for himself and this creates many funny situations in America and Europe both. The scenes in Prava/Prague are the funniest as Vladimir tries to teach russian gangsters how to be american. A brilliant book which is perfect for anyone who likes to laugh and think.
Rating: 
Summary: Overrated But Interesting
Review: This first novel has gotten a lot of hype - an article in the New York Times, a few scattered reviews here and there, comparing Mr. Schytegart to everybody from Salman Rushie, Saul Bellow to (egads!) Nabokov. For all that, I was disappointed in this novel. It's not as good as Nabokov! The main character, Girshkin is not that sympathetic, his female characters are thin and unconvincing, and his adventures are interesting but never really engaging. True, there are funny moments in the novel, but it's not the type of book that would force me to drop everything until I finished it. What I mean is, there are parts that are brillant, parts that are boring, and parts that are OK. So you see it's a mixed bag. I don't regret reading it, but I don't think I would have missed "the next Nabokov" if I hadn't, either. However, I look forward to seeing this author's future work.
Rating:
Summary: Not nearly as good as it should have been
Review: A lot of the reviewers are right on target: the New York chapters, at the beginning, are so on-target, so well thought out and promising, and the European portion is just a terrible let-down. I wonder if the author, or his editor, knew this but there was just no salvaging it. Still, I recommend the book, slightly and with reservations; Shteyngart seems to be one of those authors that critics adore who masks a less than stunning talent with a tangy but shallow cleverness (see "Everything is Illuminated" and Dave Eggers). They inject so much cleverness into their sentences, twist and contort and suffuse them with so much filling, that, when the book is taken as a whole, the characters are as thin as the paper they're printed on. What motivates Vladimir here is, ultimately, Shteyngart's need to be witty; that is what motors what passes for a story...and it just isn't much to go on. Vladimir ends up being a concoction, a compilation, rather than a human being. But what does Shteyngart care what I or others think? Probably not much. But he really ought to learn the difference between craft and being crafty.
Rating:
Summary: A search for identity
Review: The plot is summarized nicely by the other reviewers. One touched briefly on what I thought was the major theme of the novel, the search for identity. First, I have to say that I found the style very clever. True, the book sagged a bit at about the 400th page, but the witticisms and displays of knowledge of esoterica -- how many people are familiar with the notion of Social Security's residual functional capacity -- continued. But what I found most meaningful were the author's comments about finding a true American persona. At about the age of 10, the protagonist and his family emigrated from Russia, where he was always identified as a Jew. In the U.S. he was always identified as a Russian. In addition to the necessity of his leaving the country, he seemed to hope he might be identified as himself in Prava. His initial group, the multi- country Eastern European criminals called him an American. The American Crowd, however, with whom he managed to ingratiate himself, really were not sure what to make of him. Over the course of the novel, he had three major girlfriends. The first, Challah, was a bit outside of society herself. The second, Francesca, was definitely American, but a bit suspect because she, her family and friends were all intellectuals. The third, Morgan from Ohio, seemed to Vladimir like the ultimate American. Toward the end of the book, Vladimir speculates on what it would be like to have a real American midwestern son, whom he definitely would not be able to understand at least half the time. Americanization at last! This is really a wonderful first novel, with its mostly tight writing, the multiple themes intertwined with a great deal of activity. I will look forward to future works by this author.
Rating:
Summary: The New Confederacy of Dunces
Review: I lived in Prague for three years, and I find incomprehensible the complaints of some readers that Shteyngart's Eastern Europe is not exactly how they remember it. The land which Shteyngart so hilariously skewers is precisely the same as the Eastern Europe in which I resided. Believe me, in the '90s when I lived there (the period in which the book takes place), it needed a Shteyngart-like skewering, and it probably still does. More importantly, HOW LITERAL DO YOU PEOPLE WANT TO BE? Pardon my vehemence, but I am driven nuts by reviewers who carp ad nauseum at an author when the problem is theirs, the reviewers, for being too literal and humorless to get it! "The fault, Dear Brutus, is not in The Russian Debutante's Handbook" -- to paraphrase the Bard. (And why are reviews written by uncomprehending readers always the longest?) This is satire, people! It's farce. It's NOT a sociological treatise. It's supposed to be absurd, looney, and over-the-top. If your sense of humor doesn't mind thinking a bit in order to get its fix of side-splitting laughter, buy this book. Not since John Kennedy Toole's Confederacy of Dunces have I met an insane and lovable rogue like Vladimir Girshkin or had as much fun reading a book. This is delicious, vicious farcical satire, played out by the goofiest cast of characters of every ethnicity and mental illness imaginable.
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