Summary of Our Country Friends by gary shteyngart

By Justin Reese

DISCLAIMER

This is NOT the original Gary Shteyngart's book

This is a well-detailed Summary of Our Country Friends by gary shteyngart

 

"Both elegiac and very, very funny, Our Country Friends is the most ambitious book yet by the author of Super Sad True Love Story". "An homage to Chekhov with four romances and a finale that will break your heart". (The Washington Post).

• Language: English
• Publisher: jUSTIN REESE
• Release date: Nov 18, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201929305

Book preview

Act One

The Colony

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1

The House on the Hill was in a tizzy. Two sets of plumbers from both sides of the river had been summoned to dewinterize the bungalows behind the main house. A windstorm had brought down the heavy branches of two dead trees flanking the driveway. Senderovsky had only learned to drive three years ago. The concept of a blind curve continued to elude him.

The very sight of meat for tomorrow's cookout inspired in him a joy that in a younger man could be called love. He had somewhere picked up the phrase tooling around. Ed Senderovsky could picture Ed pursing his lips around a glass of wine and pronouncing it drinkable. He bought bottles of wine, cognac, rye, schnapps and a strange single malt from the Tyrol. The liquor store proprietor looked very pleased as he rang up the many purchases.

Masha Senderovsky's house had once belonged to a chef, and now his wife lived in it. I can't work with all this noise, Masha said in Russian to her husband, mindful of the handyman. The handyman was listening to old music on a handsome red radio. The handyman had noticed a change in the Senderovskys since he started working for them three years ago. The woman had become larger, more local-looking around the waist and arms.

The man had shrunk and emaciated himself and lost most of his hair. Senderovsky wanted to flood his mouth with liquor, to stupefy himself in the manner of his ancestors. The lot in front of the station was filled with European cars awaiting passengers. City folk clambered up stairs from the platform to the station, breathless with age. Ed managed to light a cigarette with one hand while simultaneously popping open the trunk and depositing his vintage bag.

Senderovsky's friend Karen, who was slightly related to Ed through a dissipated ancestor back in Seoul, also sometimes wore that expression, but she had only been able to pull it off recently. Ed Senderovsky's friend begged him to come up from New York. Ed saw a great frontal system of boredom on the horizon, of endless upper-middle-class chatter. What could he do? His friend was coming up for a few days to work on a screenplay with him.

I think we have enough. I don't want anything to spoil, Ed said as he piled items into a basket. How was the train up? she asked, her tone a little too needy. The two men walked silently up the cedar steps of the vast covered porch. Ed and Sasha were sitting in the living room of their new home when Masha asked, Can you tell me where you've traveled since December?. Ed drew a line in the air across the Arabian Sea from (presumably Addis Ababa to Abu Dhabi. I was over by Lake Balaton. The wine was plonk, but I ate great veal liver soaked in butter and paprika, would love to know how they made it.

2

Cho had missed driving since moving back from the West Coast. She could never identify the frisson it gave her, the sense of being slightly more American. Driving matched her new sense of power, which, if she were honest with herself, she still did not fully understand. Karen walked toward the fence, along mounds of recently cut grass. A sheepdog was pacing up and down the perimeter, yapping her head off.

Karen could make out a lone, tiny figure moving about in the dusk on the Senderovsky side of the fence. Karen's eyesight was getting