Little Failure

A Memoir

By: Gary Shteyngart

Narrated by: Jonathan Todd Ross

After three acclaimed novels - The Russian Debutante's Handbook, Absurdistan, and Super Sad True Love Story - Gary Shteyngart turns to memoir in a candid, witty, deeply poignant account of his life so far.

Shteyngart shares his American immigrant experience, moving back and forth through time and memory with self-deprecating humor, moving insights, and literary bravado. The result is a resonant story of family and belonging that feels epic and intimate and distinctly his own. Provocative, hilarious, and inventive, Little Failure reveals a deeper vein of emotion in Gary Shteyngart' s prose. It is a memoir of an immigrant family coming to America, as told by a lifelong misfit who forged from his imagination an essential literary voice and, against all odds, a place in the world.

©2014 Gary Shteyngart (P)2014 Recorded Books

Critic reviews

"Jonathan Todd Ross had to meet quite a challenge while narrating Shteyngart's memoir filled with humor, sarcasm, self-deprecation, and personal triumphs - and succeed he does in representing the author with pizzazz." ( AudioFile)

Witty and funny

You have to be from eastern Europe to fully enjoy this and empathize with his experience.

Great story, wonderful narration!

The narration complements the text wonderfully. I am not sure the author could have done better himself. The narrator has different voices for the author as adult, as child, for his father etc. It is a wonderful performance and you will not want to stop listening. Absolutely worth it. I can see myself listening to this at another time, and perhaps even reading Shteyngart's books.

I loved it!

What made the experience of listening to Little Failure the most enjoyable?

The narrator has a calm, clear voice. He is able to shift from an English accent to Russian accent to Russian to Hebrew in a smooth and natural way. He really captured the emotion in the words he read.

What did you like best about this story?

The author's ability to laugh at himself and his keen satire on a number of topics.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

yes

Good memoir... Good story...

Great performance.. Could do without the effort for fake Russian accents. Would have been better straight up English, without the poor attempts at foreign accents. They all sound like bad variations of Dracula.

got more disappointing

I am a big Shteyngart fan and was fun in the early going but got much less so as he got into adolescence - most adolescents aren't that interesting and neither is he. Too bad. Go back to novels.

Still laughing and weeping

Really, a great immigrant story. G. Shteyngart can coax a laugh and a sigh from the same sentence. He can place you right in the room with him, self deprecating and darling, and his perplexed, quasi lost but not helpless parents who just love him so much and, simultaneously, damage him terribly, and get you to see the moment he is describing from all sides. Particularly in scenes with G and his parents, you simultaneously feel for both of them.
Everyone in this story of life in the new world is trying his/her best, and making mistakes that scar deeply. When GS spoke the book's last lines I wanted more. I wanted to know what came next.

well written narrative of the immigrant experience

What did you love best about Little Failure?

lots of self depracating humor ala woody allen

What did you like best about this story?

everyone was very real--felt like you knew the characters

Which character – as performed by Jonathan Todd Ross – was your favorite?

why Gary, of course!

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

His description of trying to fit in to his new high school, recognizing diversity in backgrounds but less diversity in intellectual abilities

Modern Soviet Immigrant Story

This author is smartly witty. The narrator is genius. His Russian accent gets fainter as the story goes along and the protagonist assimilates into the American culture.

very good listen

I really enjoyed this audiobook. The author is very funny and his life story is very interesting. Russian immigrant, challenging, quirky parents(ultimately loving), dealing with American kids as both a Jewish person and from a country which most Americans despised at the time of the author's arrival. The narrator was excellent, very good with Russian accents, a very good fit with the author's words. Well done!

Funny in doses

Any additional comments?

This amusing, frequently hilarious memoir chronicles Shteyngart journey from Soviet era childhood in Leningrad, to his family’s emigration in the late 70”s to New York, to his college years and first time book deal. Shteyngart indisputably has a gift for storytelling and turn of phrase and the narrative breezes along. His experiences are heavily dosed with self-deprecating humor and one liners that sometimes border on shtick. Though the book is often funny, I found that if I listened too long, it tended to lose its charm and grate a bit. I found I liked it much better when I listened to it in small, measured doses. The narration is spot on, capturing Shteyngart’s angst ridden persona. The mimicry of his parent’s Russian accents humorously (and without insult) enlivens what they are saying. If you haven’t read any of Shteyngart’s fiction (I hadn’t), don’t let that deter you from Little Failure. In the end, this is a lighthearted, breezy read that won’t change your life but will distract you from it.