Lake Success by Gary Shteyngart, 338 pages.Shteyngart, author of The Russian Debutante's Handbook, and Little Failure, among others, is not afraid to delve deeply into the flaws of his characters. Barry has plenty of flaws. We are introduced to him in the opening sentence as " Barry Cohen, a man with $2.4 billion of assets under management." He is fleeing from the life he made, fleeing from his Seema, his young and beautiful wife, fleeing from Shiva, his on-the-Autism-spectrum son, and fleeing from the questionable financial decisions he has made. Barry's crazy journey drives the story. He takes a Greyhound journey in search of his college sweetheart, but what he is looking for is much harder for him to define, because he is kind of crazy. A funny, absurd, uncomfortable book that is very well-written.
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