It’s hard to be a 10-year-old girl. This is especially true if you’re Vera Bradford-Shmulkin, a Russian Korean child navigating the intricacies of playground politics amid rising fascism in America.
In Gary Shteyngart’s latest novel, “Vera, or Faith,†the young, precocious Vera lives in Manhattan with her Jewish Russian father (“Daddyâ€), a struggling magazine editor preoccupied with cultural capital, and her Protestant New England stepmother (“Anne Momâ€), a liberal housewife who spends her time organizing political salons. There’s also Dylan, their darling blond-haired son, who relied on Vera’s legacy status for admission into a highly competitive public school. Rounding out this ultra-modern family unit are Stella, a sardonic self-driving car, and Kaspie, a chess robot that excels at Danish Gambit openings and dispensing personal advice in equal measure.
Outside their apartment every week, protesters flood the streets for March of the Hated, a movement in favour of an enhanced vote, worth five-thirds of a regular vote, for “those who landed on the shores of our continent before or during the Revolutionary War but were exceptional enough not to arrive in chains.†Terrified and heartbroken by these misguided crusaders, Vera one day finds herself assigned to the pro-Five-Three side in a class debate and must learn their arguments in order to win. Her debate partner is Yumi, a student from Japan whom she desperately wishes to befriend and, like Vera, would be cruelly excluded from an enhanced vote.
Meanwhile, Vera’s parents’ marriage is slowly disintegrating, prompting her to draft reasons for each of them to stay together. On a list intended for her father, she appeals to his longing for proximity to the intelligentsia and a comfortable life, writing, “Went to Brown for graduate school. Makes a lot of delectable ‘WASP lunches’ for all of us. Is Five-Three which will keep us safe.†On the list for her mother, Vera highlights her father’s resilience and artistic efforts: “Survived his parents and immigration, so can survive anything. Speaks two languages. His long struggle for full recognition is about to be over.â€
“Vera, or Faith,” by Gary Shteyngart, Random House, 256 pages, $37.99.
Vera’s observations subtly point to the central tension within her family: between stated political affiliations and actions taken in one’s own domain. Her father is a morally superior leftist who dismisses her stay-at-home mother as a “tradwife,†despite happily living off her trust fund as he attempts to court a Rhodesian billionaire to buy his magazine. Though she carries out meal preparation and school drop-offs, he declares, “Labor’s my jam. You can actually make a difference with labor.â€
Her mother lays claim to progressive beliefs, but it’s not clear whether her fundraising events are motivated by a desire to enact meaningful change or mere optics. She seems insistent on smoothing over Vera’s idiosyncrasies, such as compulsive arm flapping and reciting large vocabulary words, instructing her to mirror the other girls at school. At home, she pays Vera to arrange her bookshelf not alphabetically or by genre, but in a manner where “authors of color, and women were front and center.†For both parents, the domestic space is a battlefield where political disagreements are fought, rather than where children are guided and supported.
One evening, Vera eavesdrops on a conversation between her parents, leading her to believe she must urgently find “Mom Mom,†her birth mother. Toward this goal, she enlists the help of Yumi, who eagerly assists in playing detective, using her precious weekly four hours of internet use to guess common Korean surnames and cross-reference candidates with alumni of Vera’s father’s alma mater. An ideal co-conspirator and confidante, Yumi shows Vera what being in touch with one’s cultural heritage can look like, what she could gain if their search proved successful, and what had been absent from her upbringing.
Told from Vera’s eye level, the novel seizes her sense of wonder to draw attention to the absurdity of contemporary life in America. In Shteyngart’s near-future, popular kids attend algebra and violin camp over the summer in New York, and two states away, a mandatory “Holmes†pregnancy blood test — named after the infamous Theranos founder — must be administered to women of reproductive age entering and exiting Ohio. We, as readers, acquire knowledge of the new normal alongside our innocent protagonist to a disturbing effect. Unlike her parents, whose convictions have formed and hardened, Vera has not yet fallen into despair, inaction or the trap of identity politics. As such, her naivety serves as a strategy to question assumptions and attitudes across the political spectrum, to approach lofty subjects without the baggage of labels.
Where other novels from the perspective of children might feel tedious or contrived, “Vera, or Faith†remains sharp and engaging while addressing the obstacles of language and narration. When Shteyngart’s wit threatens to shatter the illusion, he pulls back by having Vera quote her father, phrases that are recorded in a “Things I Still Need to Know Diary.†For instance, there’s “Maginot Line,†a defensive line of fortification to prevent the invasion of Nazi Germany into France, used to refer to the living room in their increasingly volatile home. Other entries simply include words like “pontificate†or “gregariously†that would be unlikely to appear in the lexicons of even the most studious fifth graders. To that end, Shteyngart sustains Vera’s interiority, inviting readers into the mind of a child who is bright and exuberant, yet ultimately vulnerable and helpless within the structures of centuries-old institutions.
Between holding her family together, finding her biological mother and thriving at school, Vera has plenty to deal with, though the 256-page novel always maintains a buoyancy. Miraculously, Shteyngart manages to braid these struggles of identity, class, love and belonging into a story that reflects the condition of modern life without didacticism. Even in the fourth and final section, where Vera’s mission reaches a critical point, readers will sail through the startling revelation about her maternal family and the circumstances surrounding her birth, perhaps to a fault. The exhilarating conclusion races toward the finish line with all the answers we’ve waited for, leaving us breathless and emotionally dangling.
For the most part, however, Shteyngart’s latest novel is a charming, bittersweet coming-of-age narrative that seamlessly incorporates the ridiculousness of American politics into a bildungsroman with heart. At once delightful and tragic, our fierce heroine recalls to us the joys and pains of preadolescence and, more importantly, serves as a necessary reminder to resist a dystopia that promises to arrive with every passing year, month and day.
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