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Lake Success (Paperback)
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Lake Success (Paperback)

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£8.99
Paperback 352 Pages
Published: 06/06/2019
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*Over 50 Best of 2018 listings worldwide*

'Gary Shteyngart hears America perfectly; its fatuity, its poignant lament, its boisterous self-loathing. Its heartbeat. Reading him sometimes makes me want to scream - with recognition and with pure hilarity' - Richard Ford

A riotously satirical road trip through modern America from the brilliant author of Super Sad True LoveStory and Absurdistan

Barry Cohen, master of the universe, has just had a very public meltdown involving a dinner party, an insider trading investigation and a $30,000 bottle of Japanese whisky. So he flees New York City, leaving behind his beautiful young wife and son, but remembering to bring his six favourite designer watches. Zig-zagging south through Trump's America on a Greyhound Bus pilgrimmage he is singularly unprepared for, Barry heads to Texas - to find his old college girlfriend and, with her, a shot at a second chance...

Lake Success marries the trademark Shteyngart wit with an astonishing emotional resonance, capturing the vivid eccentricity and contradictions of America right now while speaking to the universal human experience of love, belonging, and the pursuit of happiness.

'A trip through the American wasteland - from the people who have too little, to the people who have too much. Incredibly smart, incredibly funny, incredibly tragic, and therefore incredibly human, this is the perfect novel for these dysfunctional times' - Nathan Hill

'The funniest book you'll read all year. A rollicking and zinger-filled road trip [that] sneakily deepens into a poignant tale of a man trying to outrace his problems.I was utterly floored' - Maria Semple

'Stupendous... Reflecting with perfect comedy and horrible tragedy exactly what America feels like right this minute... I barked with laughter at the same time as wincing in pain' Elizabeth Gilbert

Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
ISBN: 9780241984086
Number of pages: 352
Weight: 245 g
Dimensions: 198 x 129 x 21 mm


MEDIA REVIEWS

Shteyngart, perhaps more than any American writer of his generation, is a natural. The wit and the immigrant's sense of heartbreak just seem to pour from him - The New York Times

Uproariously funny, bitingly satiric, yet also warm and big-hearted - Boston Globe

SPECTACULAR... More than just an artistic tour de force, Lake Success succeeds in saying something big about America today. By turns compassionate and mournful, wickedly satirical and ultimately aspirational. He captures what Philip Roth once called the 'indigenous American berserk' - NPR/Fresh Air

A novel in which comedy and pathos are exquisitely balanced - Washington Post

Gary Shteyngart hears America perfectly; its fatuity, its poignant lament, its boisterous self-loathing. Its heartbeat. Reading him sometimes makes me want to scream - with recognition and with pure hilarity - Richard Ford

An unforgettable road trip through an America that's ominously divided, wildly diverse, and weirdly familiar. Gary Shteyngart writes with brutal honesty, virtuoso wit, and stubborn compassion for his deeply flawed but still somehow lovable characters - Tom Perrotta, bestselling author of 'The Leftovers'

The funniest book you'll read all year. A rollicking and zinger-filled road trip [and] a poignant tale of a man trying to outrace his problems. Epic, melancholy, staggeringly beautiful - Maria Semple, author of 'Where'd You Go, Bernadette?'

A trip through the American wasteland - from the people who have too little, to the people who have too much. Incredibly smart, incredibly funny, incredibly tragic, and therefore incredibly human, this is the perfect novel for these dysfunctional times - Nathan Hill, author of 'The Nix'

A novel reflecting with perfect comedy and horrible tragedy exactly what America feels like right this minute. I barked with laughter, at the same time as wincing in pain. Shteyngart has held up a mirror to American culture that is so accurate and so devastating... Stupendous - Elizabeth Gilbert

Lake Success is a genial and warm-hearted book...a virtuoso piece of work, full of brilliant noticings...an unhysterical novel about a hysterical country at a hysterical time - the work of a novelist who believes in the power of fiction to illuminate out shared world. - Literary Review

Shteyngart does slapstick as well as ever, but he stakes out new terrain in the expert way he develops his characters' pathos.... A stylish, big-hearted novel. Shteyngart made his name as a sharp satirist, and he'll undoubtedly widen his appeal with this effort - Publisher's Weekly

The satirical layering is masterful. Dark - so dark - yet delicious. - Esquire

Lake Success is undeniably enjoyable, rattling along with good jokes and sharp set pieces, and shot through with Shteyngart's good-natured melancholy. - The Times

Referencing classic novels like The Great Gatsby and On the Road, Shteyngart whips up a novel that's part-satire and part-comedy of manners, humanising the super-rich while casting a critical eye over their world. It's funny, cutting, but above all compassionate - The Herald Magazine

Shteyngart's comic energy is well deployed on the ridiculously rich, especially amid Trump's campaign and his election by, perhaps, many Greyhound riders. - Daily Mail

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“An American road trip”

An American road trip, a satirical swipe at modern America, a state of the nation novel…. Whatever you want to call it ‘Lake Success’ plays out the fall and rise of Barry Cohen, a super-rich hedge fund manager,... More

Hardback edition
Helpful? Upvote 22

“The American Dream gone toxic”

Barry Cohen, the main character in Lake Success, is an incredibly deluded individual. When Barry's life is hit by both financial humiliation and a catastrophic family row he decides to light out for the... More

Hardback edition
Helpful? Upvote 18
Kev McCready

“Drowning In America.”

Sheyteyngart’s last novel ‘Super Sad True Love Story’ foretold a mid-century, Dystopian America. This is a sort of pre-Trump/post Trump novel. The lead character, Barry Cohen is duplicitous, heartless and ego driven... More

Paperback edition
Helpful? Upvote 10

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