Our Country Friends

A Novel

By: Gary Shteyngart

Narrated by: Rob Shapiro

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • GOOD MORNING AMERICA BUZZ PICK • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, Financial Times, The Washington Post, Time, Los Angeles Times, New York Post, Town & Country, Good Housekeeping, Kirkus Reviews

Finalist for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction • Longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize • “A perfect novel for these times and all times, the single textual artifact from the pandemic era I would place in a time capsule as a representation of all that is good and true and beautiful about literature.”—Molly Young, The New York Times (Editors’ Choice)

Eight friends, one country house, and six months in isolation—a novel about love, friendship, family, and betrayal hailed as a “virtuoso performance” (USA Today) and “an homage to Chekhov with four romances and a finale that will break your heart” (The Washington Post)

In the rolling hills of upstate New York, 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.

©2021 Gary Shteyngart (P)2021 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“The novel’s strengths abound. It upends clichés, pieties and commonplaces while also noticing salient details of the lockdown.”—The New York Times Book Review

“Our Country Friends has all [Shteyngart’s] usual humor and absurdity, but it’s deepened by a new empathy.”—Los Angeles Times

“Shteyngart knows how to make you belly laugh, and he’s in his element here, poking fun at the claustrophobia of privilege. He perfectly captures the nature of adult friendships and the petty jealousies, disappointments, and dependencies that can define them.”—Vulture

Tooooo loooooong

The first three acts were brilliant story telling. The act was long, tedious, and self-indulgent.

A good listen

The book is very interesting as Covid isolation surprised and affected us all in profound ways. At times the story is annoying and feels a tad contrived. Irregardless, it is definitely worth listening to. It was our book group pick and we certainly had plenty to talk about.

Unlikable characters

First part quite engaging and the writer is talented. However, the last part with the flashbacks was uninteresting and bloated. The most likable character died, leaving the rest humbled but not sure that was enough to change them. Money and property changed hands but they will continue their pretentious ways. Bummer.

Amazing performance

I’ve been a fan of Gary Shteyngart for years, but I have to say that I might have enjoyed this book mainly because of the amazing performance. The story is fine, though it leaves weird holes and leads the reader down a few blind alleys without any reason I could see, but Rob Shapiro makes each character come alive so fully that you fall in love with each of them in turn.

Beautifully written, painful, but very, very moving

Gary Shteyngart’s comic self loathing can be an acquired taste for some, but I think his keen observance of human nature, in all its glory and gory warts, is magnificent. Our Country Friends is *the* novel of the pandemic, when it comes to the second generation immigrant, creative, work-from-home class. Buried beneath the comedy of human failings is ultimately a deeply moving portrait of what is feels like to be human during this time, how we yearn for connection and family, and what it means to be American when America feels of the brink of dissolving. I sobbed at the end and was completely surprised to find myself doing. My favorite novel of 2021, hands down.

As an aside, the narration was fabulous, absolutely spot on, and elevated the story for this listener. The story constantly shifts narrative perspective among the characters and the narrator did a phenomenal job of shifting personas!

Enjoyable , written with great skill.

Great writer, lovable plot, to the extent there is a plot. Very good characterization. Worth taking the time to enjoy it. Sit back and enjoy the ride.

America in the time of covid

Immigrants, pandemic, celebrity, forever love, earth-shattering disappointment. This extraordinary novel is destined to be a snapshot in time ala Love in the Time of Cholera

Perfect Pandemic Novel

Witty, timely, heartbreaking. Captured the feeling of the country respite in the middle of the terrifying spring and summer of 2020. Wonderful characters. Finished it just in time to return to the city.

Some great spots

The story most definitely had brilliant moments But parts that plodded on with no relevance to anyone but the author, tempered the overall enjoyment of the novel. Is the story about friends in quarantine ? Or a vehicle to tell stories of growing up as immigrants in the US? It is both, and each side of these vying stories suffer. I probably will remember it. At my age that is quite an accomplishment.

Want your mind blown?

I loved this story and the audio performance as well. A perfect read for these convoluted times- deeply human and nourishing like mother’s milk. Brilliant in every sense.