From the presentation of the characters of Gary Shteyngart’s fifth novel, in order of appearance like a play, we have the impression of being in Chekhov’s house.
We thus suspect that we are about to see a tragicomedy unfold before our eyes. Uncle Vanyawhere domestic dramas and existential heartbreaks will intertwine.
The distribution ? The owner of the house, Alexandre (Sacha) Borissovitch Senderovski, an American writer of Russian origin and “landowner” in serious need of cash. His wife, Macha, psychiatrist. Natacha, their eight-year-old daughter, adopted from China, who suffers from generalized anxiety disorder and is fixated on BTS, a boy band Korean.
But also some close friends that Sacha has known since high school, his extended family: Karen Cho, “the Asian cool who played the ukulele in a bar in Bushwick,” who just sold his dating app for a few million; Vinod Mehta, a former lecturer turned chef, has always been in love with Karen. All at the dawn of fifty. All colorful and dissatisfied.
Added to them are a former student of Sacha’s who became a writer, a “gentleman” and a famous actor, who had bagels sent from Montreal and commissioned Sacha to write the script for a television series – the novelist’s only hope for pay off his debts. Not forgetting “various American villagers”, and even a groundhog named Steve.
At the very beginning of the COVID pandemic, in March 2020, in the House on the Hill — surrounded by a few small bungalows — Sacha prepared to receive “these big children without children” for as long as necessary: local meats, vintage wines , over-age alcohol. A refuge from the virus and the inconveniences of confinement, a short two-hour drive from New York, in a peaceful and deliciously “bobo” village in the Hudson Valley.
This sets the scene for My dear friends, where we find Gary Shteyngart (born Igor Semyonovich Shteyngart, in 1972, in Leningrad, Soviet Union) lively and caustic as always, champion of social caricature. A proven touch in titles like Treatise on good manners for young Russians, Super sad love story Or Memoirs of a good-for-nothing. A vibrant ping-pong driven by the spiral of shared memories, the passing of time, mercilessly frayed illusions.
Things become complicated when Vinod asks Sacha if he could recover the manuscript of an aborted novel that he had entrusted to him 20 years ago, the pandemic reawakening his desire to tease the muse. Pretending to have lost it, Sacha rushes to the attic before going to bury his friend’s novel in a groundhog hole – Steve, if you followed correctly. A box immediately recovered by Karen, who will not hesitate to read “this rare and impossible thing: the novel by a young man whose subject was not himself”.
What follows is a variation on loss of control. This spicy closed session which takes place over a few months will undermine their friendship – and Sacha’s tight finances. Alcohol, idleness, sex and illness will do the rest, fueling a sparkling back and forth.