Amber Smith

Dr. Lavender

English 2085

25 November 2014

“Super Sad True Love Story”

“Super Sad True Love Story” is set in a future not so far away. The main character,

Thirty-nine year old Lenny Abramov, son of Russian immigrant, falls in love with a young

Korean American woman, Eunice Parker. The author, Gary Shteyngart, uses emails and diary

entries to tell Lenny and Eunice’s story of super sad love. Lenny works for a company that sells

life extensions to wealthy people while Eunice recently graduated college with a degree in

Images and Assertiveness. Lenny falls in love with Eunice because at first he was unable to

identify with anyone but when he met Eunice, she was like a new clean toy and while he lives in

the past, Eunice lives in the now. And Eunice falls in love with Lenny’s want to have all of her.

With their story, the reader is able to see the roles of inner and outer beauty and how much it

matters in their world. But while Eunice and Lenny are falling in love, the rest of America is in

an economic crisis. The economy in shambles and the debt out of control, the country only

survives by the grace of the Chinese and their credit.

However, I did not like this book. It was really boring and hard to stay focused on it. And

even though the novel is set in our not-so-distant future, the main character was completely

unrelatable. Lenny was such a lazy person throughout the whole book. He was so obsessed with

his personality score but he refused to buy new clothes or anything until Eunice forced him to.

He wants to buy the immortality juice but he doesn’t exercise or eat healthy; things that help you
live longer. Lenny was just really annoying to really about with all his self loathing. Also, in the

summary of the book, it says that its supposed to be funny. It definitely was not.

But Shteyngart did get some things right in his novel. Social networking is getting out of

control. Everyone spends most their time texting, tweeting, and shopping online. A lot of people

are illiterate and I do feel that reading is dying out. Its rare to see people with books in their

hands because they have been replaced with cell phone or tablets. In the “Super Sad True Love

Story” world, credit is very important. This is true for our world too. Having bad or good credit

can make or break you and its realistic that it would become even more important in the future.