Still Here
A Novel
-
-
4.7 • 10 Ratings
-
-
- $9.99
-
- $9.99
Publisher Description
A profound and dazzlingly entertaining novel from the writer Louis Menand calls "Jane Austen with a Russian soul"
In her warm, absorbing and keenly observed new novel, Lara Vapnyar follows the intertwined lives of four immigrants in New York City as they grapple with love and tumult, the challenges of a new home, and the absurdities of the digital age.
Vica, Vadik, Sergey and Regina met in Russia in their school days, but remained in touch and now have very different American lives. Sergey cycles through jobs as an analyst, hoping his idea for an app will finally bring him success. His wife Vica, a medical technician struggling to keep her family afloat, hungers for a better life. Sergey’s former girlfriend Regina, once a famous translator is married to a wealthy startup owner, spends her days at home grieving over a recent loss. Sergey’s best friend Vadik, a programmer ever in search of perfection, keeps trying on different women and different neighborhoods, all while pining for the one who got away.
As Sergey develops his app—calling it "Virtual Grave," a program to preserve a person's online presence after death—a formidable debate begins in the group, spurring questions about the changing perception of death in the modern world and the future of our virtual selves. How do our online personas define us in our daily lives, and what will they say about us when we're gone?
— New York Times Book Review, 100 Notable Books of 2016
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
When Vica, a Russian immigrant, brings her son to take an entrance exam for an elite Manhattan high school, she observes the other parents: "You could easily divide them into two categories: Susan Sontag types and Outer Borough types." Such discernments reflect Vapnyar's (Memoirs of a Muse) hilarious and weighty insights as she explores familiar yet endlessly fascinating territory: the banalities of American life through the lens of Russians who may not think coming to the U.S. was actually the best choice. In this novel, Vica, who was a promising medical student in Moscow but now works as a sonogram technician, is one of four main characters. Her husband, Sergey, who has been "steadily losing his looks for the last year or two," is fixated on creating an app he hopes will make him rich and redeem his general mediocrity. The app, a potential gold mine, as well as the inherent loneliness of social media, is a powerful theme throughout the book, as Vapnyar writes convincingly about technology's impact on her characters, offering a brilliant critique of it. As Vica and Sergey's marriage unravels, the book also explores their friendship with two other Russians: Vadik, a lonesome computer programmer, and Regina, who had been a highly sought-after translator in Russia but whose American life has left her despondent and watching lots of TV. The novel provides a lively view of a group of friends navigating their early 40s, juggling mistakes of their past and trying to remain hopeful about the future. Once again, Vapnyar illustrates her incredible ability to create rich and entertaining narratives.
