The Russian Debutante's Handbook
by Gary Shteyngart
Riverhead Books

Sort of like an old-fashioned superhero, Vladimir Girshkin comes of age out of necessity. From inauspicious beginnings as a mild-mannered immigration clerk plagued by the twin anxieties of excessive Old World baggage and insufficient New York cash, it seems unlikely that young Girshkin will amount to much more than a Gen-X rendition of a Saul Bellow hero — no small endeavor for a first-time novelist such as Gary Shteyngart. But after a few calamitous misadventures involving mafia bosses and pimping drug lords, this shuffling, second-guessing college grad heads east to Prague — and, possibly, into the ranks of the most beloved heroes of preposterous fiction.

At the height of inspiration, Girshkin the Russian-American Jew in "the Paris of the '90s" is both überman-about-town of the expat community and top dog of a fledgling pyramid scheme. He is also hopelessly on edge and precariously in love. Combining the charisma of last year's Pulitzer hero Joe Kavalier and the insecurity of Chip, one fifth of the dysfunctional "Corrections" family, Girshkin is a familiar character. Happily, "The Russian Debutante's Handbook" is a novel in which that character finally seems at home, and unlike the characters of both Michael Chabon and Jonathan Franzen, finds real peace at the end of his journey.

When award-winning author Chang-rae Lee selected Gary Shteyngart's manuscript from a pile of applications for a graduate writing program, he noted the young writer's "exquisite delight in the uses of language." Anyone familiar with the agility and richness of the Russian language, the native tongue of both writer and his hero for the first decade of their lives, will not be surprised to learn that "The Russian Debutante's Handbook" is truly a masterpiece of prose that may even be worthy of Lee's comparison to Nabokov. Certainly, Shteyngart shares Nabokov's love and understanding of Americana, if of a very different age.

Shteyngart leans hard on lyricism loaded with dry wit such as his depiction of New York as "the capital of the disaffected movement," or America, generally as the land where, "all the mistakes, all the triumphs I have had, all the Cadillacs and the pretty women and the children who hate me so much they call me by my first name and not 'daddy' and not even 'father,' this is all because of me. Me!"

But occasionally his associative descriptions are filled with real tenderness and pathos:

Upstairs in the bedroom the tremors of an inconsequential fight between Mother and Father about some instance of jealousy, a petty humiliation, or perhaps just the boredom of this particular life with its summer hot dogs, pennant championships, lake effect winds, November democracy, the raising of three children with strong springy legs and big hands that reached out to touch and comfort, that hoisted fat little bodies up elm trees to frighten squirrels out of nests, offered up basketballs to the permanently grey skies, pitched tent stakes into the ground.

As long as the young writer is being showered with the praise that only a lofty standard can offer, here is another likeness; one that springs as much from the vision of an esteemed elder poring over the dog-eared pages of an unknown gem, as from the hilarity that Shteyngart delights in creating: It is John Kennedy Toole's posthumously published masterpiece, "A Confederacy of Dunces," discovered in 1976. It seems likely that Shteyngart has a commanding future as a writer. If not, let "The Russian Debutante's Handbook" stand as rival to one of the finest madcap tragicomedies ever written, and may Vladimir Girshkin enter the ranks of anti-hero mama's boys alongside Toole's own Ignatius J. Reilly.

— Elizabeth Kiem (eckiem@yahoo.com)