Little Failure Hardcover - 2014

Media reviews

“[A] keenly observed tale of exile, coming-of-age and family love: It’s raw, comic and deeply affecting, a testament to Mr. Shteyngart’s abilities to write with both self-mocking humor and introspective wisdom, sharp-edged sarcasm and aching—and yes, Chekhovian—tenderness.”—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

“Dazzling . . . Little Failure is a rich, nuanced memoir. It’s an immigrant story, a coming-of-age story, a becoming-a-writer story, and a becoming-a-mensch story, and in all these ways it is, unambivalently, a success.”—Meg Wolitzer, NPR
 
“Hilarious and moving . . . The army of readers who love Gary Shteyngart is about to get bigger.”—The New York Times Book Review
 
“An ecstatic depiction of survival, guilt and perseverance . . . Russia gave birth to that master of English-language prose named Vladimir Nabokov. Half a century later, another writer who grew up with Cyrillic characters is gleefully writing American English as vivid, original and funny as any that contemporary U.S. literature has to offer.”—Los Angeles Times
 
“What a beautiful mess! . . . [Shteyngart has] not just his own distinct identity, but all the loose ends and unresolved contradictions out of which great literature is made.” —Charles Simic, The New York Review of Books

“The tragic story of what makes a great comic writer.”—Lev Grossman, Time
 
“Hilarious . . . an affectionate take on growing up in gray Leningrad and Technicolor Queens.”—People

“Shteyngart is a great writer—there’s no arguing his literary merit—but he’s also very, very funny, which is a rare quality in literature these days.”—GQ

“Literary gold . . . [a] bruisingly funny memoir.”—Vogue

“Funny, unflinching, and, title notwithstanding, a giant success . . . The innate humor of Shteyngart’s storytelling is dotted with touching sadness, all of it amounting to an engrossing look at his distinct, multilayered Gary-ness.”—Entertainment Weekly

“Shteyngart possesses a rare trait for a serious novelist: he is funny—and not just knowing-nod, wry-smile funny, but laugh-aloud, drink-no-liquids-while-reading funny.”—The Economist

“Shteyngart’s achingly honest, bittersweet comic memoir is a winner.”—Vanity Fair
 
“[Little Failure] might just be the funniest, most unflinching memoir ever about coming to America.”—W Magazine

“Little Failure . . . puts the lure in failure.”—The Wall Street Journal

“[A] touching, insightful memoir . . . [Shteyngart] nimbly achieves the noble Nabokovian goal of letting sentiment in without ever becoming sentimental.”—The Washington Post
 
“A near-perfect account of the churning state of one man’s inner life.”—The Sunday Times (London)

“Moving . . . and laugh-out-loud funny.”—USA Today

“[Shteyngart is] the Chekhov-Roth-Apatow of Queens.”—The Millions
 
“Surely some enterprising scholar is already gnawing at the question of why two of the brilliant outliers of American writing were Russian immigrants. One, of course, was the great Vladimir Nabokov. The other is the youngish Shteyngart. They both have the qualities of sly humor, secret griefs.”—San Francisco Chronicle

“[Little Failure] finds the delicate balance between sidesplitting and heartbreaking.”—O: The Oprah Magazine
 
“Funny, heartbreaking and soul-baring  . . . [Shteyngart is] one of his generation’s most original and exhilarating writers.”—The Seattle Times

“[A] stellar memoir.”—Parade

“[Shteyngart] has dismantled the armor of his humor to give readers his most tender and affecting gift yet: himself.”—The Boston Globe

“[Shteyngart is] a successor to no less than Saul Bellow and Philip Roth.”—The Christian Science Monitor
 
“[Shteyngart’s] irrepressible humor disguises a Nabokovian love of the English language and an astute grasp of human psychology.”—Newsweek

“Shteyngart uses his immigrant experience, together with some of the wisdom of Russia’s cultural past, to capture a generation of middle-class Americans . . . and give us a beautifully rendered world of orange-coloured cheese puffs and Cold War menace.”—The Times Literary Supplement

“If you thought his fiction was funny, read Shteyngart’s memoir, Little Failure. As you might expect, he’s no less neurotic than his characters.”—New York
 
“The very best memoirs perfectly toe the line between heartbreak and humor, and Shteyngart does just that.”—Esquire
 
“Frenetically funny, even overwhelmingly enjoyable.”—Financial Times

“[Little Failure] should become a classic of the immigrant narrative genre.”—The Miami Herald
 
“Little Failure is terrific—the author’s funniest, saddest and most honest work to date. [It’s] a powerful and often moving portrait of a troubled man’s creative origins, comparable in intent (and sometimes in quality) to some of the genre’s high-water marks, and owing particular debts to W. G. Sebald, Thomas Bernhard and, most significantly, Vladimir Nabokov, whose name Shteyngart often invokes.”—The Guardian (UK)

“There is no better comic writer alive than Mr. Shteyngart. . . . And yet it’s [his] past, and the tension it creates with the cushy interior life that America affords, that makes him a much more interesting novelist than his American peers.”—The New York Observer

“Ever wonder how a Russian émigré with a wicked sense of humor becomes a great American novelist? In his new memoir, Gary Shteyngart tells his craziest, funniest, super-saddest tale yet: his own.”—Francine Prose, Interview

“[Shteyngart’s] best work to date.”—The Moscow Times

“Shteyngart seems to have made a deal with some minor devil (a daredevil?) stipulating that if he exposed every crack and fissure in himself, laid bare every misstep, f***up, and psychic flaw, his memoir would be a deep and original book. If so, the payoff here was absolutely worth it.”—Kate Christensen, Bookforum

“By turns naive and cynical, hyper-intelligent and comically immature, empathetic on the page and unfeeling off it, his self-portrait of a Soviet Jew transplanted aged seven from Leningrad to Eighties America is a masterpiece of comic deprecation.”—The Telegraph (UK)

“This Shteyngart, sad and longing and desperate for connection (with his parents, with his readers), seems the most fully human person this author has ever created.”—The Jewish Daily Forward
 
“The best memoirs are ones that are perfectly individuated, particular—and yet somehow speak to every reader’s life, every reader’s family. This is one of those rare books.”—New Statesman

“Many, many people in this world have received blurbs from Gary Shteyngart, but I happen not to be one of them. So you can trust me when I say: Little Failure is a delight.”—Zadie Smith, New York Times bestselling author of NW and White Teeth
 
“Gary Shteyngart has written a memoir for the ages. I spat laughter on the first page and closed the last with wet eyes.”—Mary Karr, bestselling author of Lit and The Liars’ Club
 
“Little Failure is told with fearlessness, wisdom and the wit that you’d expect from one of America’s funniest novelists.”—Carl Hiaasen, New York Times bestselling author of Bad Monkey
 
“Portnoy meets Chekhov meets Shteyngart! What could be better?”—Adam Gopnik, New York Times bestselling author of The Table Comes First and Paris to the Moon

“If you, like me, have often wondered, ‘How did Gary Shteyngart get like that?,’ Little Failure is the heartfelt, moving, and truly engaging memoir that explains it all. Dr. Freud would be proud.”—Nathan Englander, author of What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank

Citations

• Asimov's Science Fiction, 04/01/2015, Page 183
• BookPage, 01/01/2014, Page 0
• Entertainment Weekly, 03/21/2014, Page 67
• Kirkus Best Nonfiction, 12/01/2014, Page 43
• Kirkus Reviews, 12/01/2013, Page 0
• Library Journal, 08/01/2013, Page 0
• Library Journal Prepub Alert, 08/01/2013, Page 58
• New York Review of Books, 02/20/2014, Page 4
• New York Times Book Review, 02/09/2014, Page 16
• NY Times Notable Bks of Year, 12/07/2014, Page 28
• People Weekly, 02/03/2014, Page 56
• Publishers Weekly, 10/28/2013, Page 0
• Publishers Weekly Best Books, 11/03/2014, Page 38
• Shelf Awareness, 01/07/2014, Page 0