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But after doing so for just one book, Lake Success<\/a>, he returned to his old stamping ground with Our Country Friends<\/a>, in which the main character was not only a Manhattan-based Russian Jew, but also a writer, which Igor is too in Vera, or Faith. In this case, however, there\u2019s a slight twist. Igor is seen through the third-person eyes of his eponymous daughter: a bright, autistic ten-year-old determined to make sense of her family, posh new school and country. To this end, she keeps an ever-expanding Things I Still Need to Know Diary in which she notes words and ideas that she later finds out about and produces in public with a proud flourish, but that ultimately do little to aid her quest for Then again, her family, new school and country are pretty baffling places to be. The only things she knows about her birth mother (aka Mom Mom) is that she was a Korean whom Igor met at college in Ohio and that she was mysteriously unable to handle having a small child. As for her father, although she tries hard and often successfully to worship him, she can\u2019t help noticing that he spends quite a lot of the time drinking \u201cDaddy\u2019s special juice\u201d and passing out on the sofa. <\/p>\n In a novel where every chapter title begins \u201cShe had to\u2026\u201d, one of the many obligations she burdens herself with is to make sure he and her Wasp stepmother (aka Anne Mom) don\u2019t split up. Meanwhile, at school, her ornate vocabulary, fascinating facts and habit of carrying The Chess Player\u2019s Bible unaccountably fail to endear her to \u201cthe Populars\u201d.<\/p>\n But most baffling of all is what\u2019s happening in America \u2014 which is where the novel rather loses its way. Or, more specifically, where it provides further proof that not the least of the damage Donald Trump<\/a> has done to the country is the effect he\u2019s had on its literati, whose obsession with the damage he\u2019s done to the country may be understandable, but by now feels wearingly predictable. In his defence, Shteyngart does hit out in all directions. As a self-styled \u201cprogressive\u201d, Anne Mom holds political salons for \u201cwomen in ballet flats\u201d, having first paid Vera to make sure that works by people of colour are prominently displayed on the bookshelves. As a self-styled \u201cleft-wing intellectual\u201d, Igor has an impressive line in sneering at more or less everything, but is less good at resisting the lure of money, however dodgy the source.<\/p>\n \u2022 Gary Shteyngart: Want to understand Russia? Then read this novel<\/a><\/p>\n In his further defence, Shteyngart at least varies the angle of attack on Trump \u2014 mainly by never referring to him directly. The indirect stuff, though, is scarcely subtle. The novel is set in a near-future America that\u2019s poised to introduce a constitutional amendment giving an \u201cenhanced vote\u201d, worth five There\u2019s also a hysterically over-the-top ending that I won\u2019t spoil, even though it\u2019s quite a book-spoiler itself \u2014 a liberal fantasy of how bad things might get. This clumsiness\/Trump Tourette\u2019s is an especial shame given how sharp, funny and touching the depiction of Vera remains. Shteyngart may not be the first novelist to contrast a child\u2019s innocence with the wicked adult world, but he does it with a winning combination of sure-footedness, mischief and a kind of melancholy sweetness that never curdles into sentimentality. The book\u2019s title is explained when Vera remembers that her name is the Russian for \u201cfaith\u201d. \u201cShe had to have faith,\u201d she decides. \u201cBut in what?\u201d It\u2019s a question that becomes harder to answer the longer the book goes on.<\/p>\n
understanding.<\/p>\n
thirds of a normal one, to white people not of immigrant stock. Several states have a policy whereby women entering them have to give a urine sample to prove they haven\u2019t had an abortion. (How urine can prove this goes unexplained.) <\/p>\n