The Russian Debutante's Handbook by Gary Shteyngart

Shteyngart recently became a father for the first time. He pronounced it addict, as in: “We have a new apartment with an addict.” But one of those pesky extra consonants came back to bite him.

The family had moved to an apartment with an attic and Shteyngart was anxious to master this expression. He would repeat words he couldn’t pronounce, trying to “get rid of a bunch of consonants to get English right.” It took Shteyngart about seven years to lose his Russian accent: “Lots of practice in front of a mirror.”

“Whenever I write, it’s in English but there’s always a Russian soundtrack in the back.” “Retaining Russian meant retaining all those memories,” he says. He was more interested in picking up English from TV shows like “Gilligan’s Island” and “The Six Million Dollar Man.”Īt the dinner table, though, the family spoke only in Russian, for which Shteyngart is grateful now. He didn’t bother too much with learning Hebrew. The family settled in New York, where Gary was sent to Hebrew school. “I was worth maybe 300 loaves and a croissant or something,” says Shteyngart. So they allowed Jews to leave in exchange for American grain. The Russians needed grain-their harvest had failed. But Soviet authorities blocked the immigration of many Jews until they could strike a deal with the United States. Like many Soviet Jews they’d been trying to leave for years to escape anti-Semitism. When Shteyngart was seven, his family moved from the Soviet Union to the United States. Shteyngart has previously written three novels, “The Russian Debutante's Handbook,” “Absurdistan” and “Super Sad True Love Story.” The memoir reads like a novel-gripping narratives, expertly-etched characters, telling details. The memoir also delves into the past, documenting the terrible suffering of some Shteyngart’s grandparents and great-grandparents.Īnd although his parents do have a copy of the book, Shteyngart says their English isn’t great, so they may wait till the Russian translation comes out. It’s full of fraught family moments-and worse. “Little Failure” won’t be a comfortable read for his parents. Hurtful goes both ways in Shteyngart’s family. 'I love the way play with language,' says Shteyngart. The memoir is called ' Little Failure.' The title is based on an English-Russian mashup expression ('failure' plus a Russian diminutive) invented by his mother. Gary Shteyngart writes in English, but his memoir draws on the Russian and Yiddish of his Leningrad childhood, and the Hebrew of his schooling in New York.

The Russian Debutante's Handbook by Gary Shteyngart