Our Country Friends

This will neither be the first nor the last work written about lockdown, but it may become one of the best. Our Country Friends has just the right balance between humour and poignancy. Reading it in a remote location like Mürren may also have added to the experience. The premise is: eight people end up spending the first lockdown together in a country house in upstate New York. Beyond the terror (will the virus get us? Will this be a moment the right-wing extremists mount a coup? Will life ever get back to normal again? etc.) there are the inevitable romantic — and not so romantic — couplings and alliances, which shift as time goes on. If there is one clear takeaway, then it was simply, as Shteyngart aptly highlights, making it up as we went along. The virus does get one of the group, and Vinod's dream sequences at the time of death were probably the weakest part of the novel. But Shteyngart does achieve closure, and the remaining characters are able to start almost renewed lives. The work owes a certain debt to Chekhov (Cherry Orchard, Uncle Vanya), but is a highly relevant and memorable read.

By Gary Shteyngart