PositiveThe New Statesman... drips with satire ... Shteyngart balances all this spiky, knowing social commentary with bucketloads of tenderness. Lenny and Eunice’s May-to-December love affair could so easily be cloying. Instead, while Lenny’s devotion is instant, insecure Eunice’s realisation - that she would quite like to be loved by \'what Prof Margaux in Assertiveness class used to call ‘a real human being\'\' - is slower. The result is believable and compelling, as the pair attempt to do the impossible, to bridge the gaps that separate their backgrounds and the generations to which they belong, all the while trying to fit in to an America barely hanging on to its own identity ... At times, the stitches that hold this love story against the backdrop are a little too clearly visible ... It’s as if Shteyngart occasionally gets overexcited by the wealth of things he has to say and starts to worry that his readers won’t pick it all up before the end of the book. But, for the most part, his control is impeccable, and the dark threat of the Bipartisan government looms behind the touching to and fro of Lenny and Eunice’s lives. And anyway, if you miss anything in the paperback, the iPad version should be out soon, right?
