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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY MICHIKO KAKUTANI, THE NEW YORK TIMES • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY TIME
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY MORE THAN 45 PUBLICATIONS, INCLUDING The New York Times Book Review • The Washington Post • NPR • The New Yorker • San Francisco Chronicle • The Economist • The Atlantic • Newsday • Salon • St. Louis Post-Dispatch • The Guardian • Esquire (UK) • GQ (UK)
Little Failure is the all too true story of an immigrant family betting its future on America, as told by a lifelong misfit who finally finds a place for himself in the world through books and words. In 1979, a little boy dragging a ginormous fur hat and an overcoat made from the skin of some Soviet woodland creature steps off the plane at New York’s JFK International Airport and into his new American life. His troubles are just beginning. For the former Igor Shteyngart, coming to the United States from the Soviet Union is like stumbling off a monochromatic cliff and landing in a pool of Technicolor. Careening between his Soviet home life and his American aspirations, he finds himself living in two contradictory worlds, wishing for a real home in one. He becomes so strange to his parents that his mother stops bickering with his father long enough to coin the phrase failurchka—“little failure”—which she applies to her once-promising son. With affection. Mostly. From the terrors of Hebrew School to a crash course in first love to a return visit to the homeland that is no longer home, Gary Shteyngart has crafted a ruthlessly brave and funny memoir of searching for every kind of love—family, romantic, and of the self. BONUS: This edition includes a reading group guide. Praise for Little Failure
“Hilarious and moving . . . The army of readers who love Gary Shteyngart is about to get bigger.”—The New York Times Book Review “A memoir for the ages . . . brilliant and unflinching.”—Mary Karr “Dazzling . . . a rich, nuanced memoir . . . It’s an immigrant story, a coming-of-age story, a becoming-a-writer story, and a becoming-a-mensch story, and in all these ways it is, unambivalently, a success.”—Meg Wolitzer, NPR “Literary gold . . . [a] bruisingly funny memoir.”—Vogue “A giant success.”—Entertainment Weekly
Een Russisch-joodse jongen die in New York opgroeit, wordt door iedereen – zijn ouders inbegrepen – als een kleine mislukkeling beschouwd. Hij is echter een overlever, heeft een vaste band met zijn grootmoeder en … Vond ik niet fameus. ( )
Even though he claims to be reining in his shtick here, he seems like a yukster who isn't as funny as he thinks he is. Perfectly pleasant, perfectly listenable but perfectly missable too. For a memoir, it seems as though it was pretty easy to write. Not a good sign. The more serious ending feels unearned. ( )
Shteyngart's memoir is as self-indulgent as most memoirs are, but it's refreshing that the author is aware of this and calls it out repeatedly. It's an interesting look inside the identity issues that come up for a child born in a different country from the one where they grow up. I mean, all of us have identity issues growing up, but to also be between two cultures and two languages seems really to turn the dial up. ( )
Life is a meaningless, aimless thing. Some memoirs do justice to life. Other books try to -- incessantly, frantically, hammering away with madness at the general fatuousness of daily living. Igor/Gary is of the latter kind. He's really trying to pour meaning and comedy into the first forty years of his life and, needless to say, his effort isn't entirely successful. It is an aimless, wild book itself, but not in the way that reflects real life -- more like in the way that writers try to connect the dots of life, doodling sticky webs of ink that smear and get all over your fingers.
I never laughed out loud. I barely snickered. Maybe that's the problem I had -- I was promised the inability to hold water in my mouth, or in my bladder. But Gary was trying too hard. He tried exacting humor out of humorless things. His parents, in many ways too similar to mine, irritated me plenty -- and this book, as a sort of comic ode to them, mythologized their journey and their lives and their personalities in a way that bothered me. Sure, show me their lives in the USSR, but why are you constantly referring back to them in such a grandiose way? This is a pair of ordinary, extremely extremely flawed individuals, and maybe if this book had been entirely about them, I'd have liked it.
But the book wasn't that. It was just a frazzly, blurry movement through this man's childhood, adolescence, maturation (or lack thereof.) It's kind of a normal life. I don't know why he'd need to write a memoir. He's also such a jerk sometimes. And his humor falls flat so often. Uch.
The beginning was great. It promised the story of a man in his 20s (like me), liberal arts educated (like me), aspiring to writing success (a bit like me), parents who'd grown up under Soviet conditions (like me), but really feeling like a failure, without guidance, not sure where to go. It was well-written and the humor worked. But that didn't last, of course, unfortunately. ( )
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY MICHIKO KAKUTANI, THE NEW YORK TIMES • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY TIME
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY MORE THAN 45 PUBLICATIONS, INCLUDING The New York Times Book Review • The Washington Post • NPR • The New Yorker • San Francisco Chronicle • The Economist • The Atlantic • Newsday • Salon • St. Louis Post-Dispatch • The Guardian • Esquire (UK) • GQ (UK)
Little Failure is the all too true story of an immigrant family betting its future on America, as told by a lifelong misfit who finally finds a place for himself in the world through books and words. In 1979, a little boy dragging a ginormous fur hat and an overcoat made from the skin of some Soviet woodland creature steps off the plane at New York’s JFK International Airport and into his new American life. His troubles are just beginning. For the former Igor Shteyngart, coming to the United States from the Soviet Union is like stumbling off a monochromatic cliff and landing in a pool of Technicolor. Careening between his Soviet home life and his American aspirations, he finds himself living in two contradictory worlds, wishing for a real home in one. He becomes so strange to his parents that his mother stops bickering with his father long enough to coin the phrase failurchka—“little failure”—which she applies to her once-promising son. With affection. Mostly. From the terrors of Hebrew School to a crash course in first love to a return visit to the homeland that is no longer home, Gary Shteyngart has crafted a ruthlessly brave and funny memoir of searching for every kind of love—family, romantic, and of the self. BONUS: This edition includes a reading group guide. Praise for Little Failure
“Hilarious and moving . . . The army of readers who love Gary Shteyngart is about to get bigger.”—The New York Times Book Review “A memoir for the ages . . . brilliant and unflinching.”—Mary Karr “Dazzling . . . a rich, nuanced memoir . . . It’s an immigrant story, a coming-of-age story, a becoming-a-writer story, and a becoming-a-mensch story, and in all these ways it is, unambivalently, a success.”—Meg Wolitzer, NPR “Literary gold . . . [a] bruisingly funny memoir.”—Vogue “A giant success.”—Entertainment Weekly
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