2.5 stars: Reading expectations are killing me this year! My previous experience with Gary Shteyngart was reading his fun novel, “Super Sad True Love Story”. His newly released “Our Country Friends” pales in comparison, at least to me. Plus, the press for this one! Of course, I expected to be blown away.Shteynhgart was on point with prose. He had some fun reality thrown into this pandemic story. He has the epidemiological dictator expecting everyone to maintain a healthy 6 feet distance from eac...

Cute start, with the dramatis personae led by Russian names, last characters being VARIOUS AMERICAN VILLAGERS.We're in the Hudson Valley, escaping NYC at the advent of Covid. Sasha Senderovsky, writer whose better days are behind him, has purchased a country dacha (so to speak) that includes bungalows, little cabins that could.Could house dramatis personae, that is -- two Korean-Americans, one Indian American, and a tough little Southern gal. Oh. And a mysterious actor somehow involved in negoti...

“My dear ones, welcome to the House of People’s Friendship”…. enter at your own risk!“All of us are useful and expendable in turn”…When expectations are low going into a book one has purchased - but then didn’t read it right away due to a low review from a wonderful respective friend ( ha, ha, Barbara)….then I figure everything ‘up’ is gravy. (laughing to myself - I don’t even like gravy)…but you get the point. I laughed - a handful of times - so that’s got to be worth something - doesn’t it?/!

Clever, funny, and poignant, Our Country Friends is framed as a Chekov play set on a country estate in the Hudson Valley during the first months of the pandemic. Shteyngart deftly reveals the flaws and foibles of the landowner, his family, and their guests. Aside from a couple of feverish dream chapters, Our Country Friends is excellent.

Kind of self-indulgent? There are also a lot of characters I didn't like and wasn't especially interested in.This is one of the first pandemic novels I've read, and I was interested in seeing how the author would handle these recent events. And he's an adept and engaging writer, but ultimately, this was kind of a flop for me.A writer/professor and his wife, a psychologist, have a country house with a bunch of little satellite bungalows around the main house, and they fill them with a collection

3.5 stars. The general concept here hits you repeatedly over the course of the book. You remember all the old novels you've read, where the wealthy gather with their friends for a season at their country estate, seeking peace from troubles in the city, and you can see them superimposed on these characters, gathered in upstate New York as the pandemic throws the city into danger and chaos. Friends gather, love sparks, relationships stumble, drama ensues. It is familiar and it is somehow new in th...

Gary Shteynart’s Our Country Friends is a full-on pandemic novel, born and reflective of the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown. Shteyngart locates the action in the Berkshires, with a Shteyngartian cast of two married Russian emigres (Sasha and Masha); their Harbin-born daughter; mutual friends of many years Karen Cho, Vinod Mehta, and Ed Kim; Dee Cameron, a former writing student of Sasha’s and a stand-out beauty; and The Actor. Dee’s now a popular essayist: ”Her essays were the equivalent of a new prison...

I smile whenever I pick up a new book from Gary Shteyngart, because I know there's a treat in store. And with Our Country Friends, he has more than delivered. While his Lake Success was a truly original take on the tRump administration, here he approaches the year 2020 with Chekhovian flair. Alexander (Sasha) Senderovsky invites a curated selection of friends to his upstate compound that consists of five bungalows and a main house, a group comprised mostly of second generation immigrants -- from...

This may be my favorite book of the year. It's also the first novel written by Shteyngart that I've read and the first set during the pandemic, a topic many authors wanted to avoid throughout 2020 as we all had too much of the reality to bear. The plot: Eight people come together at a compound in the country upstate to weather the pandemic lockdown. There is the main house they call the House on the Hill where they will all congregate for dinner and conversation and five separate bungalows. Most...

Beautifully written, this book is one of the first I have read that deals almost exclusively with the confinement period we all just lived through. A group of 7 to 8 friends are gathered in the New England compound of a Russian writer and we see relationships bend, fold, break, bloom, explode, reform...It is full of wonderful literary references and highly memorable characters. I liked the symbolic black truck which hovers like a raven over much of the story and the tie-ins to the events of 2020...

Gary Shteyngart is a rarity: a satirist with a deep heart and a soul that overflows with kindness and empathy. OUR COUNTRY FRIENDS is such a delight because it is equal parts Chekhov and Larry David. I loved it. I loved the way I smiled in recognition at the characters' foibles, laughed with them when they were happy, and cried with them when they weren't. We've all been broken by the pandemic; books like OUR COUNTRY FRIENDS are the glue that helps keep us together.

Such a tedious slog: glib, smug, and self-indulgent. This has been overhyped as the first great (or maybe just the first) pandemic novel, but I think it's just too soon, especially for what's purported to be a comic and satirical pandemic novel. Comedy equals tragedy plus time, and maybe I'm just not ready yet to laugh yet about the seriously traumatic shit we've all experienced here in America since March 2020: nearly one million entirely preventable deaths, horrific levels of open white suprem...

DNF I quit out of boredom: too many self-absorbed characters and not enough of anything else. I will not be rating or reviewing. This is my opinion only.

You know those books that stay with you, with characters who worm their way into your head and heart and continue to haunt you long after you’ve finished the last page? OUR COUNTRY FRIENDS is that book for me. It’s been a few weeks since I finished it the first time, and I’ve been finding myself missing it, like an old friend. This morning, as I started writing this review, I picked it up to re-read a few random pages in the middle, and within a minute, I was laughing and trying not to cry at th...

Many will argue that the events surrounding 2020 – be it COVID, be it the election, be it the BLM movement, and so on – changed us all. After all, these circumstances impacted every individual in some way, shape or form, and to varying degrees. Times may have been “uncertain;” how affected we were by them was anything but. I’m here to argue that 2020 didn’t change us all rather than exposed us for whom we truly are. Our fears and trepidations became more visible, our opinions more pronounced, ou...

A disappointing, self-indulgent novel that is too long, goes nowhere and leaves plot lines unfinished. The characters are unlikeable, insecure, and unreasonably juvenile in their thoughts and interactions. I found myself putting this book down, and then dreading picking it up again, and in the end, I waded through more than half in the hope of finding some redeeming quality, then skimmed to the end to make sure I didn’t miss anything - it wasn’t worth the effort. The premise was intriguing, but

This is a book about a group of friends who decide to weather the dilemma together at one of their country estates. While the pandemic rages on around them, they will experience good food, fellowship and even some romance. I realize a lot of you are probably thinking . . . . But since I am a Boomer and all I could think of was this . . . . And I was so excited to get my hands on a copy. Unfortunately, that may have been part of the problem with me reading this so wrong. Actually, I shoul...

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for my ARC in exchange for my honest review. This book will be published November 2, 2021. I was SO EXCITED to read this book, especially after reading a 5 star review from an author I follow. The description sounded so good…I was tempted to quit about 25% in but felt obligated to finish so I could review it properly. I loved the premise but I was thoroughly bored. I didn’t care about any of the characters. Although some of the sentences were quite eloquen...

"Our Country Friends" is a satire of life in the U.S. during the early months of the pandemic. Specifically, it looks at Sasha and Masha, (husband and wife in their fifties), and the bungalow community they have formed with Sasha's dearest friends. Perhaps the most sympathetic person here is the couple's 8 year old daughter Nat, who has Asperger's. Sasha is a novelist who has invited his friends to his country home where they can all evade contact with the virus, while enjoying gourmet meals and...