Lake Success
Gary Shteyngart (Penguin, £12.99)
Alastair Mabbott
Written and set in 2016, Lake Success was inspired by Shteyngart’s journey across the USA on a Greyhound bus, during which his conversations with ordinary Americans convinced him that, whatever pollsters might say, Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid was doomed. The rise of Trump is the backdrop against which he positions his central character, 43-year-old Barry Cohen, a socially liberal Republican and manager of a hedge fund worth $2.4 billion.
Barry is ridiculously rich, but we first encounter him staggering into a bus terminal, dishevelled and bleeding, in the middle of the night, about to dump his credit cards and phone in a bin and embark on a journey that will just be “him out in the world solving his own problems”. His marriage is in tatters, his three-year-old son has been diagnosed with severe autism and he’s being investigated for some financial misbehaviour that could result in a jail term. His goal is to find his old college girlfriend, Layla, a symbol of better times, and begin the next phase of his life. After all, “Starting over was what half the country seemed to desperately want.”
His journey across America, relearning how real people talk and how the country works, is by turns ironic, hilarious, infuriating and strangely touching. Barry’s chapters alternate with those devoted to his wife, Seema, the high-achieving daughter of Indian immigrants, whom he has left behind in Manhattan and who also has to decide what she really wants out of life. Having an affair with a downstairs neighbour, however, probably isn’t the best of starts.
Shteyngart has spent a lot of time around people in high finance, and one reason Lake Success works so well is that, beneath the trappings of the amoral financier, Barry is a complex, well-realised character who, whenever we think we’ve got him figured out, is still capable of surprising us. Narcissistic, deluded and filled with grandiose notions, whenever Barry thinks he’s growing as a person he’s usually just replacing one delusion with another. But the author never lets us forget that the Princeton graduate with a $130 million Manhattan apartment was once an unloved little boy who practised conversational skills in the mirror in the hope that he could charm his way to a better life. He earnestly believes there’s more to him than a money man, and is determined to prove to Seema that she was wrong to accuse him of having no imagination or soul. For all his faults, it’s hard to remain completely unsympathetic towards Barry, as he is at least trying to reach out to people outside his bubble of wealth.
Referencing classic American novels like The Great Gatsby and On the Road, Shteyngart whips up a novel that’s part-satire and part-comedy of manners, humanising the super-rich while casting a critical eye over their world and its social borders. It’s funny, cutting, but above all compassionate, Shteyngart seemingly aware that, although the vanities of the top 0.1 per cent should be examined and addressed, further division isn’t what America needs right now.
Edinburgh International Book Festival: Monday August 27, 7pm
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