Thank you to NetGalley and Allen & Unwin for the complimentary copy of Our Country Friends by Gary Shteyngart.

When I had read the book description, I was impressed and was really looking forward to reading this book.
Unfortunately, I didn't enjoy the book. I didn't like the characters and didn't feel that they developed at all. Overall, the story seemed to drag on, and I was bored through the majority of the book.

I'm sorry, but this was not for me.

I had such high hopes for this book but unfortunately it was a huge disappointment
I liked the authors writing style but I just didn’t like the book

I was so excited to read this when I read the premise but sadly for many ‘lockdown’ books it’s really fell flat for me.
Rich electric mix friends move in together to ride out Lockdown 2020, not a murder but definitely some drama expected. Unfortunately, I felt like nothing really happened… partly because the characters are all referred to by multiple names making it really hard to follow and partly because they are all extremely self centred and boring.
The book is set in America, which I didn’t realised until halfway through the book - not that it really makes a difference as they can’t leave the house.
I know a couple of people who have read this and we’re also underwhelmed. Review describe it has hilarious but I completely missed any humour. My dad has since read another book by the same author and said it was much more enjoyable but sadly I don’t think I’ll be doing the same.
Covid books to me are a bit weird and still a little too recent, they also always feel abit rushed to get out whilst they’re still current…

Would love to have loved it but sadly not for me.

Previously I would stick with books even if I didn't enjoy them. I persevered with the third LOTR book for 3 months just to get it over with but lately I am just not that same person. I Marie Kondo my books. If they aren't giving me joy then I don't carry on with them. I tried with Our Country Friends. I read three chapters and I just didn't care about the characters so I DNF'd it. Maybe it was a bit too hasty and maybe I will come back to it at another point in my life but at this moment I just do not have time to read books that aren't bringing me joy.

Our Country Friends by Gary Shteyngart is available now.

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Eight friends, one country house, four romances, and six months in isolation-a novel about love, friendship, family, and betrayal.

I am not actually sure why I read this book through to the end as I did not enjoy it very much. On the positive side, it was well written. However, it promised much through the premise of the book but didn't deliver. The characters were hard to engage with and they felt rather two-dimensional. Also, the plot just didn't hang together properly for me. This is the first book that I have read by this author and I am in no hurry to read another of his.

This is a well written book and I liked the storytelling. Unfortunately I couldn't care for the characters and the story fell flat.
Not my cup of tea.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

Arguments For Our Times..
An eclectic group of friends, a country mansion in which the group are simply waiting out the pandemic hit country. Six months in isolation, the reader follows the group as they converse, discuss and cogitate. Entirely character driven, as one would expect, a dry vein of humour and with enlightening arguments for our times.

In which an ill-assorted friendship group of sophisticated city folk assemble at a country estate for some R and R. Away from work truths are told, new relationships formed, old grudges resurface, and even romance is in the air. If this sounds like the set -up of several Russian classics such as The Cherry Orchard, Uncle Vanya and A Month In The Country it is.

It is also the set-up for Gary Shteyngart’s novel. Russian emigre author Sacha invites childhood friends to ride out a pandemic away from the city at his country estate, complete with a slew of dachas, one for each guest. App developer Karen, rich boy Ed, online controversialist Dee and lost soul Vinod are not just there to ride out the pandemic, they are social bait for chief guest The Actor. His buy-in is crucial to Sacha's new TV show getting off the ground, and avoiding foreclosure on the estate.

Much like Chekhov, the plot is powered by misunderstandings, assignations and revelations. Though it's a smile and a chortle rather than belly laughs, Shteyngart’'s concept allows him to aim at the iniquities and dark absurdities wrought by the pandemic without depressing the hell out of us. There's a big tone shift towards the end which won't convince everyone, but like his literary influences there's a deft mixture of melancholy and comedy.

This is the first book I've read by this author and I was disappointed, after the very positive reviews it seems to have received. A well written narrative but I found the characters very boring. And I think I've already read too many pandemic novels... Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC.

In March 2020, with the threat of the Covid pandemic closing in, novelist Sasha Senderovsky invites a small but eclectic group of friends to stay with his family in the countryside bungalow complex he has built as an echo of his childhood in Russia. By leaving the city they hope to avoid becoming infected, although Sasha's psychiatrist wife, Masha, is infuriated by Sasha's choice of guests as well as the thoughtlessness towards her carefully prepared Covid protocols and procedures.

To begin with, the mood appears eccentric and farcical, perhaps reflecting the general uncertainty and confusion at the start of the pandemic. Over the following six months we explore the various different relationships and how they evolve within their isolated and disconnected bubble, providing thought provoking insights into our different experiences of the pandemic, with moments of beautiful writing, particularly towards the end.

I have tried to avoid books set around the pandemic, however I really liked the sound of this one. It is very well written, and although its based around the pandemic, it is done so very subtly, and the characters all really stand out and you really relate to them. I have already recommended this to friends.

Between seeing this novel billed as the start of Covid-19 pandemic literature and a premise which I found irresistible (“eight friends, one country house, four romances and six months in isolation”), I was very keen to read. Sasha Senderovsky is a Russian-born fading literary star who along with his psychiatrist wife, Russian-born Masha, and precocious adopted eight-year-old Korean daughter, Nat, is planning to wait out the pandemic at their Hudson Valley bungalow colony. Joining the Senderovsky’s are Sasha’s two oldest school friends, both second-generation immigrants; hugely successful Korean app developer, Karen Cho, and Indian Vinod Mehta, the unsuccessful nice guy of the group. Making up the party are Karen’s distant cousin, American Korean Ed, and one of Sasha’s brightest students in outspoken and attractive Southern essayist, Dee Cameron. Sasha’s waning literary career has seen him switch to screenwriting and with his future finances resting on a collaboration with a film star known only as The Actor, it is his arrival that dictates the early mood.

Although the book starts and ends with Covid-19 at the forefront, for the bulk of the novel the virus takes a back seat and seems rather incidental, with neither the hosts or guests seeming unduly worried about anything other than themselves. This was a source of frustration for me and it felt very much like Gary Shteyngart never really thought beyond conveniently adding the threat of the virus to the novel as a selling point and failed to actually deliver. Between this there are several romances (some more convincing than others), a burgeoning friendship between Karen and Nat and the discovery of an old betrayal which threatens to divide Sasha from his oldest friends.

By halfway, I was struggling to follow the plot (or lack thereof) and after a decent opening the book lost its way completely with an extensive dream sequence and a denouement that felt oddly twee in comparison to how self-absorbed and unpleasant the characters were for a good eighty percent of this book. To me the characters felt like caricatures that relied mostly on stereotypes of their respective cultures as opposed to real people and made it hard to consider the book as an exploration of friendship and futures in a time of real uncertainty. So much of the humour seemed tied to the fact that Sasha, his wife and his closest friends are all second-generation immigrants to America with Russian, Korean and Indian heritage respectively and as a native Brit the humorous references flew right over my head. I found the entire second half not only a slog to push through but a struggle to follow and one thing I didn’t expect was to be bored rigid by a book lauded as humorous by some many sources. The half-hearted attempt to introduce friction between the white locals and Sasha’s ethnic guests in the second half was eye-rollingly obvious and it was a relief when this book finally limped to a close.

We are now trying to see a growing trickle of novels inspired by the Covid-19 pandemic. Some have used the strange events of 2020 as backdrop for their plots while others have responded in a more abstract way to the ideas of sickness and contagion. Gary Shteyngart's 'Our Country Friends' belongs to the former camp, and for the most part I found this an enjoyable comedy of manners taking advantage of the narrative possibilities offered by the lockdowns of the last couple of years by bringing a disparate cast of characters together for an extended period of time.

The novel takes place at the 'bungalow colony' in upstate New York of Sasha Senderovsky a middle-aged writer. Along with his long-suffering wife and precocious adopted daughter, Senderovsky is joined by a selection of his old friends including a social media entrepreneur and a dilettante 'gentleman', as well as one of his former pupils who is now making her name as a right-wing polemicist and a celebrated (and unnamed) "Actor" who is meant to be starring in a forthcoming adaptation of one of Senderovsky's books. Shteyngart structures his novel like a Chekhov play, and we follow this group through the early anxiety and uncertainty about the virus, the enforced solitude of the first lockdown, and the shockwaves following the murder of George Floyd.

The novel includes plenty of humour and satire at the expense of both sides of the political divide, and most of the characters are very well-drawn (especially the totally narcissistic Actor), but the plot does contain more sombre and bittersweet elements as well as interesting reflections on the immigrant experience from the perspective of characters born in the USSR, India and South Korea. I found the writing engaging and enjoyable throughout, though I was slightly less engrossed towards the end of the novel when there is more of a focus on some of the characters' memories and imaginings. Additionally, because of the novel's predominant focus on a privileged enclave, the novel felt more superficial in its interrogation of the implications of the pandemic than some other writers' responses.

Nonetheless, I found this an entertaining and playful read overall. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for sending me an ARC to review.

It's March 2020 and a calamity is unfolding. A group of friends and friends-of-friends gathers in a country house to wait out the pandemic. Over the next six months, new friendships and romances will take hold, while old betrayals will emerge, forcing each character to reevaluate whom they love and what matters most. The unlikely cast of characters includes a Russian-born novelist; his Russian-born psychiatrist wife; their precocious child obsessed with K-pop; a struggling Indian American writer; a wildly successful Korean American app developer; a global dandy with three passports; a Southern flamethrower of an essayist; and a movie star, the Actor, whose arrival upsets the equilibrium of this chosen family. Both elegiac and very, very funny, Our Country Friends is the most ambitious book yet by the author of the beloved bestseller Super Sad True Love Story.

I was really looking forward to reading this book as the synopsis and the blurb really peaked my interest. This was my first time reading a book that is set in the pandemic so that in itself interested me.

I have heard very good things about this author, so I was really looking forward to reading his work, but this really disappointed me. I think I would like to try and read another book by Shteyngart in the future which will hopefully be more intriguing for me.

I felt like there was way too much going on and I found it hard to keep focused on the story. I didn't really like any of the characters at all ((I found them very dull, boring, and bland) so I found it hard to make a connection to them and to route for them. I found myself reading very quickly as I just wanted something interesting to happen, but nothing at all sparked my interest.

Overall, I really did not like this book. I must stress that this is my opinion and everyone likes different books, so just because I didn't like it, it doesn't mean that you won't like it.

This book is really very well written, which is to be expected given the author! There are some lovely rich descriptions and some moments of real humour (I enjoyed the author breaking the “fourth wall” occasionally.

The characters are engaging and, while not quite likeable, feel real.

I’m only not rating this higher as I think the pandemic still feels all too “real” and present at the moment and it times it still felt a bit uncomfortable. I don’t think I’m quite ready for pandemic fiction yet!

I struggled to get into this book. I don’t mind reading about unlikable characters but I just didn’t care about the characters.

2.5 stars


These I'm afraid we're not my people.
I didnt particularly enjoy my time in their company,and at times it felt like it was all a bit slow.
The pandemic aspect felt a bit too stark a reminder of where we were at.

I think I'm just not the right audience for this particular book.