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Vera, or Faith: A Novel
A poignant, sharp-eyed, and bitterly funny tale of a family struggling to stay together in a country rapidly coming apart, told through the eyes of their wondrous ten-year-old daughter, by the bestselling author of
Super Sad True Love Story
and
Our Country Friends
“A novel you can read in one sitting that will stay with you forever.”—Karen Russell
“Very funny, very sad, very sharp, and completely delightful.”—Elif Batuman
“A brilliant fable about childhood, and so much more, in our broken country.”— Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
A MOST ANTICIPATED The New York Times, Time, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Bustle, Vulture, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Book Riot, Publishers Weekly, Literary Hub, AV Club, Hey Alma
The Bradford-Shmulkin family is falling apart. A very modern blend of Russian, Jewish, Korean, and New England WASP, they love one another deeply but the pressures of life in an unstable America are fraying their bonds. There's Daddy, a struggling, cash-thirsty editor whose Russian heritage gives him a surprising new currency in the upside-down world of twenty-first-century geopolitics; his wife, Anne Mom, a progressive, underfunded blue blood from Boston who's barely holding the household together; their son, Dylan, whose blond hair and Mayflower lineage provide him pride of place in the newly forming American political order; and, above all, the young Vera, half-Jewish, half-Korean, and wholly original.
Observant, sensitive, and always writing down new vocabulary words, Vera wants only three things in to make a friend at school; Daddy and Anne Mom to stay together; and to meet her birth mother, Mom Mom, who will at last tell Vera the secret of who she really is and how to ensure love's survival in this great, mad, imploding world.
Both biting and deeply moving, Vera, or Faith is a boldly imagined story of family and country told through the clear and tender eyes of a child. With a nod to What Maisie Knew, Henry James's classic story of parents, children, and the dark ironies of a rapidly transforming society, Vera, or Faith demonstrates why Shteyngart is, in the words of The New York Times, "one of his generation's most exhilarating writers."
“A novel you can read in one sitting that will stay with you forever.”—Karen Russell
“Very funny, very sad, very sharp, and completely delightful.”—Elif Batuman
“A brilliant fable about childhood, and so much more, in our broken country.”— Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
A MOST ANTICIPATED The New York Times, Time, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Bustle, Vulture, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Book Riot, Publishers Weekly, Literary Hub, AV Club, Hey Alma
The Bradford-Shmulkin family is falling apart. A very modern blend of Russian, Jewish, Korean, and New England WASP, they love one another deeply but the pressures of life in an unstable America are fraying their bonds. There's Daddy, a struggling, cash-thirsty editor whose Russian heritage gives him a surprising new currency in the upside-down world of twenty-first-century geopolitics; his wife, Anne Mom, a progressive, underfunded blue blood from Boston who's barely holding the household together; their son, Dylan, whose blond hair and Mayflower lineage provide him pride of place in the newly forming American political order; and, above all, the young Vera, half-Jewish, half-Korean, and wholly original.
Observant, sensitive, and always writing down new vocabulary words, Vera wants only three things in to make a friend at school; Daddy and Anne Mom to stay together; and to meet her birth mother, Mom Mom, who will at last tell Vera the secret of who she really is and how to ensure love's survival in this great, mad, imploding world.
Both biting and deeply moving, Vera, or Faith is a boldly imagined story of family and country told through the clear and tender eyes of a child. With a nod to What Maisie Knew, Henry James's classic story of parents, children, and the dark ironies of a rapidly transforming society, Vera, or Faith demonstrates why Shteyngart is, in the words of The New York Times, "one of his generation's most exhilarating writers."
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First published July 8, 2025
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About the author
Gary Shteyngart
32 books2,215 followersGary Shteyngart is an American writer born in Leningrad, USSR (he alternately calls it "St. Leningrad" or "St. Leninsburg"). Much of his work is satirical and relies on the invention of elaborately fictitious yet somehow familiar places and times.
His first novel, The Russian Debutante's Handbook (2002), received the Stephen Crane Award for First Fiction and the National Jewish Book Award.
His first novel, The Russian Debutante's Handbook (2002), received the Stephen Crane Award for First Fiction and the National Jewish Book Award.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 997 reviews
June 24, 2025
I enjoy stories told from the perspective of children who are often precocious. Ten year old Vera stole my heart from the start. It was heartbreaking to feel her anxiety believing she’s been abandoned by her birth mother, anxious that her parents would get a divorce and her second mom would abandon her. I couldn’t quite figure out her parents, disliked them , especially her father. Vera does figure them out eventually as she struggles to come to grips with her relationships and desperately tries to find her birth mom. It was heartbreaking to feel the stress of this little girl, as she struggles to make a friend and is made fun of at school. Heartbreaking as she shakes and shakes her hands until she can think of something else as she suffers through recess. Vera’s “Things I Still Need to Know Diary” will make you laugh and cry at the same time as she records vocabulary words and phrases she hears from the adults around her as she tries, but doesn’t always succeed in putting them in the right context .
There is a bit of AI and a self driving car . There’s a commentary on democracy, scary and feeling much too relevant like it could have been out of today’s news. There is an upcoming constitutional amendment vote in the states to “decide whether to give “an enhanced vote” counting for five thirds of a regular vote to so-called “exceptional Americans, “ those who landed on the shores of our continent before or during the Revolutionary War, but were exceptional enough not to arrive in chains.” Relevant to Vera as she is Korean American and in a school debate she has to take the side for the amendment. Bottom line is that in spite of the quirks and turns in the story line, Vera is a force of nature, and really just a kid who wants to be loved and I couldn’t help but love her .
I received a copy of this book from Random House through NetGalley
There is a bit of AI and a self driving car . There’s a commentary on democracy, scary and feeling much too relevant like it could have been out of today’s news. There is an upcoming constitutional amendment vote in the states to “decide whether to give “an enhanced vote” counting for five thirds of a regular vote to so-called “exceptional Americans, “ those who landed on the shores of our continent before or during the Revolutionary War, but were exceptional enough not to arrive in chains.” Relevant to Vera as she is Korean American and in a school debate she has to take the side for the amendment. Bottom line is that in spite of the quirks and turns in the story line, Vera is a force of nature, and really just a kid who wants to be loved and I couldn’t help but love her .
I received a copy of this book from Random House through NetGalley
July 22, 2025
Few novelists risk jumping on the runaway horse of contemporary life as recklessly as Gary Shteyngart. For the fiction writer, stuck at the plodding speed of publishing, such a maneuver requires gauging both political velocity and cultural direction. And yet, book after book, Shteyngart arrives just where — and when — we need him to.
Fifteen years ago, his cringingly hilarious “Super Sad True Love Story” depicted a future society hollowed out by social media. In 2018, “Lake Success” satirized the bankrupt materialism of the budding Trump era. And in the fall of 2021, he published a novel about the wild inequities of the covid pandemic — “Our Country Friends” — even while many of us white-collar readers were still happily working from home and complaining about late grocery deliveries.
The abiding miracle of Shteyngart’s work is that it seems just as timely as a Shouts & Murmurs gag in this week’s New Yorker while staying fixed to the timeless absurdity of human life. That dexterity speaks to the range of his sympathy and the depth of his attention. It may also stem from being born in the U.S.S.R. — little Igor Shteyngart emigrated to the United States in 1979; he knows in his kishkes how tightly the latest joke is braided through the oldest tragedy.
Shteyngart’s new novel, “Vera, or Faith,” tastes at first like a cherry-flavored gumdrop, but it’ll burn a hole in your tongue. The heroine, Vera, is a 10-year-old Korean American in a wealthy White family. She may be the smartest kid in fifth grade, but she’s so anxious that she compulsively flaps her hands, which attracts bullies in the classroom the way blood draws sharks in the water.
To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/...
Fifteen years ago, his cringingly hilarious “Super Sad True Love Story” depicted a future society hollowed out by social media. In 2018, “Lake Success” satirized the bankrupt materialism of the budding Trump era. And in the fall of 2021, he published a novel about the wild inequities of the covid pandemic — “Our Country Friends” — even while many of us white-collar readers were still happily working from home and complaining about late grocery deliveries.
The abiding miracle of Shteyngart’s work is that it seems just as timely as a Shouts & Murmurs gag in this week’s New Yorker while staying fixed to the timeless absurdity of human life. That dexterity speaks to the range of his sympathy and the depth of his attention. It may also stem from being born in the U.S.S.R. — little Igor Shteyngart emigrated to the United States in 1979; he knows in his kishkes how tightly the latest joke is braided through the oldest tragedy.
Shteyngart’s new novel, “Vera, or Faith,” tastes at first like a cherry-flavored gumdrop, but it’ll burn a hole in your tongue. The heroine, Vera, is a 10-year-old Korean American in a wealthy White family. She may be the smartest kid in fifth grade, but she’s so anxious that she compulsively flaps her hands, which attracts bullies in the classroom the way blood draws sharks in the water.
To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/...
July 11, 2025
A five star review of a stunning novel that I will recommend to no one. It’s so smart, so sad, so captivating, a character study of a brilliant neurodivergent 10 year old girl in a dystopian LitFic. Vera is half Jewish and half Korean, she has a younger brother Dylan. Her father edits a failing publication he wants to sell to an investor, but he is stressed and drinking alcoholically. He is fighter with Vera’s stepmom (who she calls Anne Mom) as they navigate a political climate looking to diminish voting rights.
Vera continually adds to a list she doesn’t understand. It is so fascinating to see this world through her eyes. They have self driving cars and limited autonomy, it’s a post Trump America struggling with the aftermath of a decline in democracy and freedoms. It is challenging to see this world through Vera’s eyes; because while precocious, she is still ten, and this is the world she was born into. I know I missed a bit of the world building in my desire to immerse into Vera’s viewpoint. I really liked how the first person narrative puts idioms into quotations so she can be clear to the reader. I found that to be endearing and sweet.
Vera means faith in Russian. She has faith in her father, her stepmom, in her education, and in her future. She is hopeful although we are not. She loves her AI best friend chess game. She doesn’t know to be worried about what we are worried about.
It’s brilliant and although Vera is endearing, it doesn’t exactly make you feel good. It’s not a pleasure to read. That said, it is a world I won’t forget soon.
Five stars
**a best LitFic of 2025**
Thanks to NetGalley and Random House for the ARC. Book to be published July 8, 2025.
Vera continually adds to a list she doesn’t understand. It is so fascinating to see this world through her eyes. They have self driving cars and limited autonomy, it’s a post Trump America struggling with the aftermath of a decline in democracy and freedoms. It is challenging to see this world through Vera’s eyes; because while precocious, she is still ten, and this is the world she was born into. I know I missed a bit of the world building in my desire to immerse into Vera’s viewpoint. I really liked how the first person narrative puts idioms into quotations so she can be clear to the reader. I found that to be endearing and sweet.
Vera means faith in Russian. She has faith in her father, her stepmom, in her education, and in her future. She is hopeful although we are not. She loves her AI best friend chess game. She doesn’t know to be worried about what we are worried about.
It’s brilliant and although Vera is endearing, it doesn’t exactly make you feel good. It’s not a pleasure to read. That said, it is a world I won’t forget soon.
Five stars
**a best LitFic of 2025**
Thanks to NetGalley and Random House for the ARC. Book to be published July 8, 2025.
July 30, 2025
Vera Bradford-Shmulkin, a fifth-grade philosopher in a clip-on bowtie, shaped lean and tubular like a dachshund, absorbs the full rot of post-everything America through debate prep, recess betrayals, and the rhythmic despair of parents whose affections collapse under the weight of Twitter, tote bags, and Rhode Island trusts.
Her father, Igor, editor of a failing magazine for "smarties," defines their class position with precise malaise: "We're what's called merely rich... our position is very precarious especially with how much I've staked on this goddamn magazine." Her Things I Still Need to Know diary catalogs the vocabulary of decline, from "neoliberal frog-march of the damned" to "raffish."
Vera drafts lists designed to halt divorce proceedings; domestic legislation written in crayon cursive. These itemized pleas include: "Is funny most of the time," "Looks raffish in his tuxedo," and "Lets us tag along on many delectable fascinating trips." She clings to these phrases as if syntax might rescue intimacy, as if the right adjective could resurrect a marriage hemorrhaging through heated debates about organic quinoa and staff writer salaries.
The school stages a Lincoln-Douglas debate on whether descendants of Revolutionary-era settlers deserve five-thirds of a vote – a constitutional fever dream that makes the three-fifths compromise look like gentle mathematics.
Vera, assigned to argue in favor, finds herself preparing to speak for a policy that terrifies her into nocturnal list-making frenzies. "Resolved," she rehearses, "that Five-Three should be adopted as a constitutional amendment, I believe very strongly just as the president has said that Five-Three is a good thing for the country because it doesn't hurt ordinary regular Americans like me, it only elevates super-extraordinary Americans like my brother."
Her ally, Yumi-from-Japan, sits beside her on a bench at recess and turns her back, friendly, but not faithful. Playground politics mirror parental betrayals with devastating precision. At home, Vera eavesdrops through doors as her father mumbles, "I barely have enough [love] for you and the kids," and Anne Mom replies with the soft cruelty of someone who organizes reality into Tupperware: "She just wants to be like you because she sees people kissing your ass." The adults speak in codes of loss and sarcasm. The children decode the raw meanings with the fluency of native speakers in disappointment.
Shteyngart chronicles dysfunction with the anthropological precision of someone who survived similar suburbs. A chess robot named Kaspie soothes Vera at night; artificial intelligence programmed for authentic comfort in a house where genuine warmth requires scheduling. "You're a dutiful girl," it tells her, as she curls up in her "Leper Wing" bedroom, designed to make her feel safe and instead engineered for abandonment.
Her parents' elegant vitriol continues at dinner parties, where magazine politics tango with vegan hypocrisy and narwhal games that substitute whimsy for warmth.
"I'm the Jew around here and even I'm like let's take a breath," her father snaps during a late-night argument that Vera absorbs through bedroom walls thin as emotional boundaries. She responds to each micro-collapse with a new list, a new question, a new attempt to stay solvent in the economy of family affection.
The real heartbreak arrives quietly, smuggled in like contraband emotion. After discovering that her birth mother, Mom Mom, is terminally ill, Vera dreams of reunion: "Soon their arms were entwined, and they squeezed each other tight so that they were both the meat not the bun." Even her subconscious speaks in sandwich metaphors, the vocabulary of a child raised on artisanal everything except genuine nourishment.
This book traps its characters in an architecture of affluence and cultural capital with rot beneath every beam, every trust fund, every subscription to publications that explain why everything is terrible with exquisite prose. Parents speak in soundbites stolen from Atlantic articles and cancelled Twitter threads, their conversations seasoned with the salt of superior suffering. The kids build moral frameworks out of cereal box aphorisms and recycled podcast wisdom, constructing ethics from the intellectual debris of adults too busy performing intelligence to practice it.
Shteyngart writes with the clarity of a ten-year-old who has read too much and been loved too carelessly, who understands that sophistication often masks the simplest failures. Every joke is a sigh in disguise, every pun a prayer for meaning in a world where meaning has been commodified and sold at Whole Foods. Every chapter stains like red wine on white upholstery, permanently marked by carelessness.
That elementary school chess genius in a bowtie saw right through me, recognized the adult who once believed that the right words, properly arranged, could fix anything. Vera Bradford-Shmulkin, miniature Machiavelli of the playground, reminds us that children are natural philosophers because they haven't yet learned to mistake complexity for wisdom, or vocabulary for love.
I tried to love this. Nothing we haven't read before. Not enough chuckles to justify ... 😒
Her father, Igor, editor of a failing magazine for "smarties," defines their class position with precise malaise: "We're what's called merely rich... our position is very precarious especially with how much I've staked on this goddamn magazine." Her Things I Still Need to Know diary catalogs the vocabulary of decline, from "neoliberal frog-march of the damned" to "raffish."
Vera drafts lists designed to halt divorce proceedings; domestic legislation written in crayon cursive. These itemized pleas include: "Is funny most of the time," "Looks raffish in his tuxedo," and "Lets us tag along on many delectable fascinating trips." She clings to these phrases as if syntax might rescue intimacy, as if the right adjective could resurrect a marriage hemorrhaging through heated debates about organic quinoa and staff writer salaries.
The school stages a Lincoln-Douglas debate on whether descendants of Revolutionary-era settlers deserve five-thirds of a vote – a constitutional fever dream that makes the three-fifths compromise look like gentle mathematics.
Vera, assigned to argue in favor, finds herself preparing to speak for a policy that terrifies her into nocturnal list-making frenzies. "Resolved," she rehearses, "that Five-Three should be adopted as a constitutional amendment, I believe very strongly just as the president has said that Five-Three is a good thing for the country because it doesn't hurt ordinary regular Americans like me, it only elevates super-extraordinary Americans like my brother."
Her ally, Yumi-from-Japan, sits beside her on a bench at recess and turns her back, friendly, but not faithful. Playground politics mirror parental betrayals with devastating precision. At home, Vera eavesdrops through doors as her father mumbles, "I barely have enough [love] for you and the kids," and Anne Mom replies with the soft cruelty of someone who organizes reality into Tupperware: "She just wants to be like you because she sees people kissing your ass." The adults speak in codes of loss and sarcasm. The children decode the raw meanings with the fluency of native speakers in disappointment.
Shteyngart chronicles dysfunction with the anthropological precision of someone who survived similar suburbs. A chess robot named Kaspie soothes Vera at night; artificial intelligence programmed for authentic comfort in a house where genuine warmth requires scheduling. "You're a dutiful girl," it tells her, as she curls up in her "Leper Wing" bedroom, designed to make her feel safe and instead engineered for abandonment.
Her parents' elegant vitriol continues at dinner parties, where magazine politics tango with vegan hypocrisy and narwhal games that substitute whimsy for warmth.
"I'm the Jew around here and even I'm like let's take a breath," her father snaps during a late-night argument that Vera absorbs through bedroom walls thin as emotional boundaries. She responds to each micro-collapse with a new list, a new question, a new attempt to stay solvent in the economy of family affection.
The real heartbreak arrives quietly, smuggled in like contraband emotion. After discovering that her birth mother, Mom Mom, is terminally ill, Vera dreams of reunion: "Soon their arms were entwined, and they squeezed each other tight so that they were both the meat not the bun." Even her subconscious speaks in sandwich metaphors, the vocabulary of a child raised on artisanal everything except genuine nourishment.
This book traps its characters in an architecture of affluence and cultural capital with rot beneath every beam, every trust fund, every subscription to publications that explain why everything is terrible with exquisite prose. Parents speak in soundbites stolen from Atlantic articles and cancelled Twitter threads, their conversations seasoned with the salt of superior suffering. The kids build moral frameworks out of cereal box aphorisms and recycled podcast wisdom, constructing ethics from the intellectual debris of adults too busy performing intelligence to practice it.
Shteyngart writes with the clarity of a ten-year-old who has read too much and been loved too carelessly, who understands that sophistication often masks the simplest failures. Every joke is a sigh in disguise, every pun a prayer for meaning in a world where meaning has been commodified and sold at Whole Foods. Every chapter stains like red wine on white upholstery, permanently marked by carelessness.
That elementary school chess genius in a bowtie saw right through me, recognized the adult who once believed that the right words, properly arranged, could fix anything. Vera Bradford-Shmulkin, miniature Machiavelli of the playground, reminds us that children are natural philosophers because they haven't yet learned to mistake complexity for wisdom, or vocabulary for love.
I tried to love this. Nothing we haven't read before. Not enough chuckles to justify ... 😒
July 9, 2025
How much more could her heart break? A lot. It could and would break a lot more. There were, contrary to science, an infinite number of atriums and ventricles.
Vera, or Faith is a quietly powerful novel written from the perspective of a ten-year-old girl who is observing both her family and her country on the brink of collapse. Set in near-future Brooklyn, this is a story about unrest: a family struggling under the weight of their circumstances, a politically-divided society in upheaval. And at the center of this maelstrom is Vera, an exceptionally bright, emotionally intuitive fifth grader who keeps a diary of all the words and concepts she doesn’t know, grapples with her Jewish-Korean heritage and WASP upbringing, and longs for a best friend other than her AI chessboard, Kaspie.
This is a tough book, dealing with a variety of difficult topics: social and racial tension, alcoholism, marital issues, a fraught political climate. But Vera is the shining light even in the darkest parts of the plot. Vera is immediately endearing and incredibly sweet, and she observes the world in such a wonderfully innocent way. She feels the anxiety in the adults around her, but she doesn’t fully understand it; she has all of these big feelings and thoughts that she can almost, but not quite, articulate. Through Vera, Gary Shteyngart transports his adult readers into the mind of a child – an emotionally complex, perceptive place that reminds us how much children observe and absorb from the adults in their lives.
Vera means “faith” in Russian, and faith is something Vera has a lot of. She has faith in her family, in her classmates and teachers, and in herself. It’s heartbreaking to watch as her faith is tested over and over again, in ways she doesn’t even fully understand. But there’s an element of hope, too, because we readers also have faith in Vera. We’re left with a sense that, even if she has to grow up too fast and face hard things that no child should, our plucky little heroine is going to be just fine. I will never forget Vera, and I’ll be thinking about the world of this book for a long time. Thank you to Random House for the early reading opportunity.
November 9, 2025
I confess, I'm circumspect when it comes to children protagonists. This could explain why it took me a little bit of time to get swept up in this novel.
Vera is a precocious, somewhat socially challenged, ten-year-old girl, of mixed heritage.
Vera's family is made made up of her Jewish Russian, intellectual dad, who's strapped for cash and runs an unsuccessful magazine.
Anne Mom, Vera's adoptive mum, is a left leaning WASP, who's struggling with her domestic and social duties.
Then there's Vera's younger brother, both her parents' biological son - he's blond and blue-eyed, and tends to get on Vera's nerves.
Through Vera's observant yet innocent eyes, we witness the unravelling of a family, the societal mores , including the politics and socio-dynamics in a recent American future - with many recognisable aspects of the current geo-political and American circumstances.
This short novel had plenty to say without being preachy or too on the nose. I tend to grumble at the Russian baddie trope - but then I see what's happening in the world so it doesn't bother me anymore.
Vera is a precocious, somewhat socially challenged, ten-year-old girl, of mixed heritage.
Vera's family is made made up of her Jewish Russian, intellectual dad, who's strapped for cash and runs an unsuccessful magazine.
Anne Mom, Vera's adoptive mum, is a left leaning WASP, who's struggling with her domestic and social duties.
Then there's Vera's younger brother, both her parents' biological son - he's blond and blue-eyed, and tends to get on Vera's nerves.
Through Vera's observant yet innocent eyes, we witness the unravelling of a family, the societal mores , including the politics and socio-dynamics in a recent American future - with many recognisable aspects of the current geo-political and American circumstances.
This short novel had plenty to say without being preachy or too on the nose. I tend to grumble at the Russian baddie trope - but then I see what's happening in the world so it doesn't bother me anymore.
September 17, 2025
I've decided to stop reading the book after 120 pages.
"Vera" is about an 11 year old girl who is somewhere on the spectrum. She lives in NYC with her dad, stepmother and younger stepbrother. She attends a school for gifted children. As readers, we see her world through her point of view. I think it would have added depth to know other characters' differing points of view too.
Vera is portrayed as precocious, innocent and anxious. Her step-mother is called Anne-Mom, her biological mother is called Mom-Mom, and her father is Daddy. Vera adores Daddy, but we readers can see that he is an immature man who is too needy to be a solid father. Vera worries a great deal about whether Anne-Mom and Daddy will get a divorce. And, her biggest wish is to have a friend her age.
*****************************
The author peppers his "words" with constant "quotation marks," which I found to be "annoying." While Vera is a sympathetic character, her voice and words were often grating to me. She comes off as precocious in an affected way, largely due to echoing her parents' thoughts.
"Vera" is about an 11 year old girl who is somewhere on the spectrum. She lives in NYC with her dad, stepmother and younger stepbrother. She attends a school for gifted children. As readers, we see her world through her point of view. I think it would have added depth to know other characters' differing points of view too.
Vera is portrayed as precocious, innocent and anxious. Her step-mother is called Anne-Mom, her biological mother is called Mom-Mom, and her father is Daddy. Vera adores Daddy, but we readers can see that he is an immature man who is too needy to be a solid father. Vera worries a great deal about whether Anne-Mom and Daddy will get a divorce. And, her biggest wish is to have a friend her age.
*****************************
The author peppers his "words" with constant "quotation marks," which I found to be "annoying." While Vera is a sympathetic character, her voice and words were often grating to me. She comes off as precocious in an affected way, largely due to echoing her parents' thoughts.
July 8, 2025
Narrated entirely from the perspective of 10-year-old Vera, this novel offers a refreshing yet emotionally complex reading experience. Vera is exceptionally bright, both intellectually and emotionally aware, and her observations often transcend her age. While she navigates topics far beyond what most children should face, her narration remains authentic, blending youthful curiosity with startling insight. Her anxiety, meticulous tendencies, and ambitious dreams of a future in STEM are portrayed with care, making her a deeply endearing and unforgettable protagonist.
What makes this story so compelling is how it captures the often-overlooked emotional depth of childhood. Through Vera's voice, we witness the slow unraveling of her family, and we are reminded just how much children absorb—both the spoken and the unspoken. There are moments when you want to comfort her, and others when you wish she could simply enjoy being a child. The result is a nostalgic, heartfelt, and quietly powerful novel that lingers long after the final page; I would highly recommend it for readers who appreciate character-driven stories with emotional depth and perspective.
What makes this story so compelling is how it captures the often-overlooked emotional depth of childhood. Through Vera's voice, we witness the slow unraveling of her family, and we are reminded just how much children absorb—both the spoken and the unspoken. There are moments when you want to comfort her, and others when you wish she could simply enjoy being a child. The result is a nostalgic, heartfelt, and quietly powerful novel that lingers long after the final page; I would highly recommend it for readers who appreciate character-driven stories with emotional depth and perspective.
March 17, 2025
So thrilled to be granted an early copy of the latest from Gary Shteyngart, one of my absolute favorite observers of the world condition. As seen through the eyes of a precocious ten-year-old, who, by virtue of being half Korean half Jewish, is herself is an example of the new order, we are jettisoned into the crazy society of today. As with Rosencranz and Guilderson, we only hear half truths eavesdropped and only half understood, and are ourselves prone to misinterpretations. While I usually don't take to accounts related by youngsters created by adults, since it's Shteyngart, it proves worthwhile.
October 26, 2025
Vera is an academically gifted but socially stunted 10-year-old growing up in a wealthy New York family. Her father is the editor of a prestigious but struggling magazine and her WASPy stepmother, who’s raised her since infancy, contributes to the family finances via her “small trust.” Vera sets out to find her birth mother, who she’s been told left shortly after she was born. All this is playing out against a backdrop of a near-future America in crisis. The country has veered sharply right, with some states requiring pregnancy tests upon entering and leaving as part of an abortion crackdown, and legislation proposed that would see white people who can trace their ancestry to the country’s founding era receiving five-thirds of a vote.
I don’t think it’s a common trope, but I absolutely devour any book that focuses on a character’s personal problems with a dystopian or apocalyptic backdrop. This book reminded me of Julia Armfield’s Private Rites in that sense. Nothing makes disaster feel more real than watching someone deal with it while also facing the more mundane struggles of day-to-day life. The choice to centre a child as the narrator of this book creates a dramatic irony that is sometimes played for humour, but also helps us to see societal issues with fresh eyes. Vera is an immensely awkward but deeply likeable narrator, and if you’re the kind of person who reads Goodreads reviews for fun, you might see a bit of your childhood self in her.
I highly recommend this one!
Thank you to the publisher for giving me access to an eARC of this book!
I don’t think it’s a common trope, but I absolutely devour any book that focuses on a character’s personal problems with a dystopian or apocalyptic backdrop. This book reminded me of Julia Armfield’s Private Rites in that sense. Nothing makes disaster feel more real than watching someone deal with it while also facing the more mundane struggles of day-to-day life. The choice to centre a child as the narrator of this book creates a dramatic irony that is sometimes played for humour, but also helps us to see societal issues with fresh eyes. Vera is an immensely awkward but deeply likeable narrator, and if you’re the kind of person who reads Goodreads reviews for fun, you might see a bit of your childhood self in her.
I highly recommend this one!
Thank you to the publisher for giving me access to an eARC of this book!
November 8, 2025
Let us take a moment to think of poor Vera Bradford-Shmulkin. Merely ten years old and made to bear the weight of such a ponderous name. So eager to learn everything there is to know, so excited that she rushes to the bathroom to crazily shake her hands to release the energy. She keeps a journal she calls the “Things I Still Need to Know Diary,” in which she writes it all down -- not always correctly, but that's not the point. Nor is it always amusing: she also posts things about “She Had to Survive Recess” and “She Had to Hold the Family Together.” She soaks up the lessons on behavior offered by the grownups in her life (“mirroring,” for example, to appeal to people). Her best “friend” is her AI chess set (named "Kaspie," of course) and she dreams of one day being a grownup “woman-in-STEM.”
Ah yes, the grownups. Dad (Igor), of Russia-Jewish stock, is a “manfluencer” who spends the day on the couch drinking martinis and smoking weed and creating content. Her stepmother, Anne, is of WASP-ish background. She consumes “special vitamins” that she buys at a local drugstore. Vera refers to her as Anne Mom to distinguish her from Mom Mom, her Korean birth mother who has vanished. (Vera’s search for Mom Mom plays significant part in the novel.) And then there’s her younger blonde, blue-eyed stepbrother Dylan who craves attention so much that he is wont to run around the house saying, “Look at my penis! Look at my penis!”
“Vera, or Faith” is a hilarious, biting, pointed, and strangely moving satire. Set some few years from now in a dystopian future, it views the currents of our time through a mordant lens. The pretenses of the high educated Left is mocked: Anne Mom added the ‘e’ in tribute to Anne Frank; Dad keeps his books in alphabetical order except when company comes — on those occasions he pays Vera to reorganize the library so works written by authors “of color” and women were at eye level; when Anne Mom’s friends come by, Their Eyes Were Watching God is “put front and center.”
As for the Right… unsurprisingly (in light of our current situation), they have become ascendant. Self-driving cars report their owners, and officials actively monitor women’s menstrual cycles, even to the point of setting up separate traffic lanes at state borders for men and women. There’s a very funny/not funny scene when Vera is transported by her self-driving car Stella across state lines and is stopped at the border for inspection. The officer interviews Vera: “You’re not being trafficked in this car or anything? Could you turn the music down please?” Stella lowered The Goldberg Variations. “No,” Vera said, unsure of what that meant. “This is our family car, Stella.” “No one’s been grooming you?” “My aunt Cecile took me to a hair-grooming place. We had a smoothie.” “No one’s been grooming you to be gay or trans?” “I don’t think so. But I’m not supposed to think in binaries.”
Much of the plot revolves around Vera's search for her missing biological mother. The other big current concerns a proposed change to the Constitution. In school, Vera and her classmates are told they are going to debate the proposal: “It’s a consequential year,” Ms. Tedeschi said, “because the states are having their constitutional conventions. And these conventions will decide whether to give an ‘enhanced vote’ ”—she made the quotation marks with her long fingers—“counting for five-thirds of a regular vote to so-called ‘exceptional Americans,’ those who landed on the shores of our continent before or during the Revolutionary War but were exceptional enough not to arrive in chains.” The protest in opposition to the measure is called the March of the Hated” (calling to mind what we did a couple of days ago, on the 18th, as well as VP Vance's remarks about some people having more claim to being true Americans than others). Absurd, of course, but hardly funny. Vera is given the assignment of defending the measure.
Humor runs throughout the book. Dropping Vera and Dylan at school one morning, Stella the smart car encourages them to “Enjoy the simulacrum of actual learning.” (“Really, the key to being less odd was to develop your artificial intelligence.”) And: The PTA moms begged Principal Bellavista for less work, because it was hard for them to complete all the assignments on time, even if their children helped out.
“Vera, or Faith” (it is no spoiler to mention that ‘Vera’ is the Russian word for ‘faith’ as well as the name of Vladimir Nabokov’s wife, as Vera learns, “a woman who was a genius herself but in the olden days she had to serve her husband” — make of that what you will) is a pleasure to read. Funny, biting, touching, insightful, serious. It made me eager to read more from Gary Shteyngart.
Ah yes, the grownups. Dad (Igor), of Russia-Jewish stock, is a “manfluencer” who spends the day on the couch drinking martinis and smoking weed and creating content. Her stepmother, Anne, is of WASP-ish background. She consumes “special vitamins” that she buys at a local drugstore. Vera refers to her as Anne Mom to distinguish her from Mom Mom, her Korean birth mother who has vanished. (Vera’s search for Mom Mom plays significant part in the novel.) And then there’s her younger blonde, blue-eyed stepbrother Dylan who craves attention so much that he is wont to run around the house saying, “Look at my penis! Look at my penis!”
“Vera, or Faith” is a hilarious, biting, pointed, and strangely moving satire. Set some few years from now in a dystopian future, it views the currents of our time through a mordant lens. The pretenses of the high educated Left is mocked: Anne Mom added the ‘e’ in tribute to Anne Frank; Dad keeps his books in alphabetical order except when company comes — on those occasions he pays Vera to reorganize the library so works written by authors “of color” and women were at eye level; when Anne Mom’s friends come by, Their Eyes Were Watching God is “put front and center.”
As for the Right… unsurprisingly (in light of our current situation), they have become ascendant. Self-driving cars report their owners, and officials actively monitor women’s menstrual cycles, even to the point of setting up separate traffic lanes at state borders for men and women. There’s a very funny/not funny scene when Vera is transported by her self-driving car Stella across state lines and is stopped at the border for inspection. The officer interviews Vera: “You’re not being trafficked in this car or anything? Could you turn the music down please?” Stella lowered The Goldberg Variations. “No,” Vera said, unsure of what that meant. “This is our family car, Stella.” “No one’s been grooming you?” “My aunt Cecile took me to a hair-grooming place. We had a smoothie.” “No one’s been grooming you to be gay or trans?” “I don’t think so. But I’m not supposed to think in binaries.”
Much of the plot revolves around Vera's search for her missing biological mother. The other big current concerns a proposed change to the Constitution. In school, Vera and her classmates are told they are going to debate the proposal: “It’s a consequential year,” Ms. Tedeschi said, “because the states are having their constitutional conventions. And these conventions will decide whether to give an ‘enhanced vote’ ”—she made the quotation marks with her long fingers—“counting for five-thirds of a regular vote to so-called ‘exceptional Americans,’ those who landed on the shores of our continent before or during the Revolutionary War but were exceptional enough not to arrive in chains.” The protest in opposition to the measure is called the March of the Hated” (calling to mind what we did a couple of days ago, on the 18th, as well as VP Vance's remarks about some people having more claim to being true Americans than others). Absurd, of course, but hardly funny. Vera is given the assignment of defending the measure.
Humor runs throughout the book. Dropping Vera and Dylan at school one morning, Stella the smart car encourages them to “Enjoy the simulacrum of actual learning.” (“Really, the key to being less odd was to develop your artificial intelligence.”) And: The PTA moms begged Principal Bellavista for less work, because it was hard for them to complete all the assignments on time, even if their children helped out.
“Vera, or Faith” (it is no spoiler to mention that ‘Vera’ is the Russian word for ‘faith’ as well as the name of Vladimir Nabokov’s wife, as Vera learns, “a woman who was a genius herself but in the olden days she had to serve her husband” — make of that what you will) is a pleasure to read. Funny, biting, touching, insightful, serious. It made me eager to read more from Gary Shteyngart.
July 17, 2025
This is great fun - excellent humour and a good story too.
Our main character is Vera, 10 years old, super smart and - because of that - having difficulties making friends.
One day she overhears her father (a progressive intellectual of sorts and pretty insufferable, but a great character) explain to her stepfather that her biological mother has cancer, making Vera want to meet her at all cost.
The novel is set in the near future United States, perhaps 10 years from now - AI plays a much greater role in everyday life and politically the extreme right has been doing well in implementing all kinds of idiotic policies.
I had never read Gary Shteyngart before, but - in his own words - he is a writer "we might need to take seriously".
Our main character is Vera, 10 years old, super smart and - because of that - having difficulties making friends.
One day she overhears her father (a progressive intellectual of sorts and pretty insufferable, but a great character) explain to her stepfather that her biological mother has cancer, making Vera want to meet her at all cost.
The novel is set in the near future United States, perhaps 10 years from now - AI plays a much greater role in everyday life and politically the extreme right has been doing well in implementing all kinds of idiotic policies.
I had never read Gary Shteyngart before, but - in his own words - he is a writer "we might need to take seriously".
August 12, 2025
I am sure this book is brilliant, but I don’t care. Although, many sentences were stand-alone brilliant and witty
July 10, 2025
Oh, Shteyngart, so much literary talent and yet...and yet...
The more recent novels have not been good. (VERA is somewhat better, but is still muted.) And I think I finally understand why. My disappointment with OUR COUNTRY FRIENDS had a lot to do with Shteyngart leaning into the dull and privileged (which worked to some extent with LAKE SUCCESS, but let's be real: this is shooting monkeys in a barrel) rather the outliers or the misfits that fueled his extremely fun early work. We recall ABSURDISTAN and SUPER SAD TRUE LOVE STORY with glee because of the controlled anarchy laced with comedic asides. All this revealed human insight through divine artistic serendipity.
Well, Shtengart doesn't want to be anyone's funnyman anymore. Between this and the last novel, the humor appears to have been completely whacked out of him. You will not laugh once. I'm actually okay with that. I sincerely respect Shteyngart's efforts to shift into a new direction here.
What I'm NOT okay with is that Shteyngart is too afraid to bare his heart onto the page these days. He is too cautious. He's almost like the Hakeem Jeffries or Chuck Schumer of literature. And, well, I'm looking for a Jasmine Crockett or Zohran Mamdani type. Most of us are. Our time requires fearless and authentic chroniclers and, at the end of the day, Shteyngart prefers turning out this bourgie pablum. Although VERA is more heartfelt in its domestic emphasis.
With Vera, Shteyngart comes so close to nailing the nitty-gritty of what it is to be alive here. He HAS the chops to pull off the inner life of the half-Jewish, half-Korean titular girl in a multicultural family. Her obvious love for her parents and her observations of the world around her suggest a sweetness contained within Shteyngart, but he's not ready to melt down the amber and let his inner dragonfly soar into the heavens. Which is deeply frustrating.
Where's the true vivacity, Shteyngart? Where's the full emotional candor that you bravely set down in your memoir LITTLE FAILURE? Am I going to have to quit you, sir? I don't want to have to do that. But the fictitious deity's honest truth is that I'm losing patience. I know Shteyngart has the goods, but he does need to be discouraged from phoning it in. From being timid. I want to read a Gary Shteyngart novel that I can care about and proudly hold up to the heavens. But I can't do that with VERA. And I worry that I won't be able to do that for a while.
So my Team Shteyngart flag has been lowered for the time being. Shteyngart, hopefully I can raise it again with the next book. But some editor really needs to push you. This current approach ain't working, buddy. You need to go back to literary boot camp and remember why it is you wanted to write in the first place.
The more recent novels have not been good. (VERA is somewhat better, but is still muted.) And I think I finally understand why. My disappointment with OUR COUNTRY FRIENDS had a lot to do with Shteyngart leaning into the dull and privileged (which worked to some extent with LAKE SUCCESS, but let's be real: this is shooting monkeys in a barrel) rather the outliers or the misfits that fueled his extremely fun early work. We recall ABSURDISTAN and SUPER SAD TRUE LOVE STORY with glee because of the controlled anarchy laced with comedic asides. All this revealed human insight through divine artistic serendipity.
Well, Shtengart doesn't want to be anyone's funnyman anymore. Between this and the last novel, the humor appears to have been completely whacked out of him. You will not laugh once. I'm actually okay with that. I sincerely respect Shteyngart's efforts to shift into a new direction here.
What I'm NOT okay with is that Shteyngart is too afraid to bare his heart onto the page these days. He is too cautious. He's almost like the Hakeem Jeffries or Chuck Schumer of literature. And, well, I'm looking for a Jasmine Crockett or Zohran Mamdani type. Most of us are. Our time requires fearless and authentic chroniclers and, at the end of the day, Shteyngart prefers turning out this bourgie pablum. Although VERA is more heartfelt in its domestic emphasis.
With Vera, Shteyngart comes so close to nailing the nitty-gritty of what it is to be alive here. He HAS the chops to pull off the inner life of the half-Jewish, half-Korean titular girl in a multicultural family. Her obvious love for her parents and her observations of the world around her suggest a sweetness contained within Shteyngart, but he's not ready to melt down the amber and let his inner dragonfly soar into the heavens. Which is deeply frustrating.
Where's the true vivacity, Shteyngart? Where's the full emotional candor that you bravely set down in your memoir LITTLE FAILURE? Am I going to have to quit you, sir? I don't want to have to do that. But the fictitious deity's honest truth is that I'm losing patience. I know Shteyngart has the goods, but he does need to be discouraged from phoning it in. From being timid. I want to read a Gary Shteyngart novel that I can care about and proudly hold up to the heavens. But I can't do that with VERA. And I worry that I won't be able to do that for a while.
So my Team Shteyngart flag has been lowered for the time being. Shteyngart, hopefully I can raise it again with the next book. But some editor really needs to push you. This current approach ain't working, buddy. You need to go back to literary boot camp and remember why it is you wanted to write in the first place.
January 4, 2026
The background against which this story occurs is a dystopian near-future, say four or five years from now, in an America in which there's a push toward "5/3," that is, the votes of white native-born Americans born will count as five-thirds of the votes of "new citizens." "MOTH" ("March of the Hated") protests are taking place, and ten-year-old Vera's stepmother is an activist, despite being one of the privileged. Vera herself is the offspring of her Russian-Jewish father and a Korean mother who's not in the picture. That background, however, remains in the background except for how it intrudes via her family and those close to her.
Vera's parents are feuding. Her intelligence, which outstrips her emotional development, is driving the action, as she feels responsible for keeping her parents together and, generally speaking, solving all the problems of her world. In this effort, she's able to enlist Kaspie (her talking chess computer) and Stella, the family's the self-driving car.
The book is a quick and engrossing read, holding my attention despite the chaos of the season. It's the third of Gary Shteyngart's books I've read: I enjoyed his memoir Little Failure but Lake Success not so much. This one's much better than that.
One quibble: why pathologize our protagonist by putting her "on the spectrum?" Let her be a very bright and quirky kid with a personality. Then her cure by loving-kindness would make more sense!
Vera's parents are feuding. Her intelligence, which outstrips her emotional development, is driving the action, as she feels responsible for keeping her parents together and, generally speaking, solving all the problems of her world. In this effort, she's able to enlist Kaspie (her talking chess computer) and Stella, the family's the self-driving car.
The book is a quick and engrossing read, holding my attention despite the chaos of the season. It's the third of Gary Shteyngart's books I've read: I enjoyed his memoir Little Failure but Lake Success not so much. This one's much better than that.
One quibble: why pathologize our protagonist by putting her "on the spectrum?" Let her be a very bright and quirky kid with a personality. Then her cure by loving-kindness would make more sense!
July 9, 2025
4.5 stars.
Read
September 21, 2025Nothing wrong with this book, but the voice of a precocious child and the whole premise of dystopian pop-culture-ridden future just didn't grab me. I kept reading because my book club picked it and I'd bought it. The end was moving, but, for me, not worth the journey. The blurb says this book is "bitterly funny." Not funny at all.
October 2, 2025
As a domestic drama (with a great deal of humor), this mostly works; as a social/political commentary, not so much. But young Vera, the novel’s narrator/protagonist, is a terrific character, and her voice alone makes this a four-star read for me.
July 13, 2025
The Bradford-Shmulkin family is falling apart. A very modern blend of Russian, Jewish, Korean, and New England WASP, they love each other deeply but the pressures of life in an unstable America are fraying their bonds. There’s Daddy, a struggling, cash-thirsty editor whose Russian heritage gives him a surprising new currency in the upside-down world of 21st century geopolitics; his wife, Anne Mom, a progressive, underfunded blue blood from Boston who’s barely holding the household together; their son, Dylan, whose blond hair and Mayflower lineage give him pride of place in the newly forming American political order; and, above all, the young Vera, half-Jewish, half-Korean, and wholly original.
Observant, sensitive, and always writing down new vocabulary words, Vera wants only three things in life: a friend at school; Daddy and Anne Mom to stay together; and to meet her birth mother, Mom Mom, who will at last tell Vera the secret of who she really is and how to ensure love’s survival in this great, mad, imploding world.
Both biting and deeply moving, Vera, or Faith is a boldly imagined story of family and country told through the clear and wondrous eyes of a child.
Thank you, Atlantic Books, for inviting me to read an AD-GIFTED proof of Gary Shteyngart's newest novel. This was my first experience of his work but he has a substantial pedigree, having written 5 previous novels and a nonfiction title, as well as writing for HBO's blockbuster series, Succession, and winning the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize.
Written with a very dry and wry wit, Vera, or Faith, is set in America in a not too distant future. The country is even more broken, divided and dystopian than it is today. The combined forces of fascism, extremism, fundamentalism and white supremacy are seeing off democracy, and it all feels frighteningly, terrifyingly, possible. A direct consequence of present-day Trumpian values and policies.
This is an America where driverless cars, AI and personal devices rule supreme; women of childbearing age crossing state lines have to undergo pregnancy tests on entry and exit; social and class division is more entrenched than ever; racism and immigration issues remain front and centre; and an amendment to the Constitution has been proposed which would give a five-thirds vote to 'exceptional Americans' who landed on America's shores before or during the Revolutionary War, who were 'exceptional enough not to arrive in chains'.
Our narrator is ten year old Vera who is precociously intelligent, even gifted, neurodivergant, and riven with incredible levels of anxiety. She's friendless, socially inept, and caught between cultures, having a Jewish father, an absent Korean mother, and a WASP step-mother.
Simultaneously witty, wise, funny, and poignant, Vera is the ultimate unreliable narrator, and she has been written with such great sympathy that you'd have to be made of stone not to take her to your heart, as she strives to connect with her birth mother, and cope with the disintegration of her parents' relationship, which runs in parallel with the wider breakdown of American democratic society.
What made it so poignant and sad for me is how a 10 year old child has this world of worries and concerns on their shoulders, at a time when they should be enjoying being happy, carefree, stressfree and innocent. Childhood, like democracy, kindness, tolerance, enlightenment and all the other great and positive attributes of civilised society has disappeared, and we're all the poorer for it.
If whip-smart social commentary is your thing, this potential read-in-one-sitting state of the nation novel is definitely worth a try, and leaves you with much to think about.
3.75 stars rounded up to 4.
Observant, sensitive, and always writing down new vocabulary words, Vera wants only three things in life: a friend at school; Daddy and Anne Mom to stay together; and to meet her birth mother, Mom Mom, who will at last tell Vera the secret of who she really is and how to ensure love’s survival in this great, mad, imploding world.
Both biting and deeply moving, Vera, or Faith is a boldly imagined story of family and country told through the clear and wondrous eyes of a child.
Thank you, Atlantic Books, for inviting me to read an AD-GIFTED proof of Gary Shteyngart's newest novel. This was my first experience of his work but he has a substantial pedigree, having written 5 previous novels and a nonfiction title, as well as writing for HBO's blockbuster series, Succession, and winning the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize.
Written with a very dry and wry wit, Vera, or Faith, is set in America in a not too distant future. The country is even more broken, divided and dystopian than it is today. The combined forces of fascism, extremism, fundamentalism and white supremacy are seeing off democracy, and it all feels frighteningly, terrifyingly, possible. A direct consequence of present-day Trumpian values and policies.
This is an America where driverless cars, AI and personal devices rule supreme; women of childbearing age crossing state lines have to undergo pregnancy tests on entry and exit; social and class division is more entrenched than ever; racism and immigration issues remain front and centre; and an amendment to the Constitution has been proposed which would give a five-thirds vote to 'exceptional Americans' who landed on America's shores before or during the Revolutionary War, who were 'exceptional enough not to arrive in chains'.
Our narrator is ten year old Vera who is precociously intelligent, even gifted, neurodivergant, and riven with incredible levels of anxiety. She's friendless, socially inept, and caught between cultures, having a Jewish father, an absent Korean mother, and a WASP step-mother.
Simultaneously witty, wise, funny, and poignant, Vera is the ultimate unreliable narrator, and she has been written with such great sympathy that you'd have to be made of stone not to take her to your heart, as she strives to connect with her birth mother, and cope with the disintegration of her parents' relationship, which runs in parallel with the wider breakdown of American democratic society.
What made it so poignant and sad for me is how a 10 year old child has this world of worries and concerns on their shoulders, at a time when they should be enjoying being happy, carefree, stressfree and innocent. Childhood, like democracy, kindness, tolerance, enlightenment and all the other great and positive attributes of civilised society has disappeared, and we're all the poorer for it.
If whip-smart social commentary is your thing, this potential read-in-one-sitting state of the nation novel is definitely worth a try, and leaves you with much to think about.
3.75 stars rounded up to 4.
July 31, 2025
Vera is an anxious 10-year-old with no friends as she starts the new school year. She lives with her father, stepmother and her half-brother and worries all the time that they won't stay married. In fact she worries so much about things that she can hardly sleep at night. Vera has always been told that she was such a difficult baby that her mother couldn't handle it and left. What kind of burden is that for a child to carry? Because there are so many things Vera doesn't understand at 10, she keeps a diary of 'Things I Still Need to Know.' She is a smart, delightful girl who just needs more love, it seems to me.
The story takes a bit of a different turn over the politics her parents get involved with and later still, over rules for women in this (futuristic?) society. That part of the book didn't work as well for me.
Many thanks to the author and publisher for providing me with an arc of this new novel via NetGalley. My review is voluntary and the opinions expressed are my own.
The story takes a bit of a different turn over the politics her parents get involved with and later still, over rules for women in this (futuristic?) society. That part of the book didn't work as well for me.
Many thanks to the author and publisher for providing me with an arc of this new novel via NetGalley. My review is voluntary and the opinions expressed are my own.
August 8, 2025
This book is like what people tell awkward gifted kids like the eponymous Vera: It has so much potential, but ultimately can't apply itself properly. The book has some clever bits, like the subtle distinction Vera's Jewish dad has with being "on the left" while her WASP mom calls herself "progressive." One thing this book does very often is put words in quotation marks that are attributed to her dad, complicated terms of phrase that he uses in his magazines, but it gets overdone and stale as the book trods along.
This book features a lot of dense political and sociological commentary delivered from the third-person viewpoint of a 10-year-old girl. I thought it was weird to set it in third person because the effect of having a young precocious protagonist is blunted when it is not in first person. The third person angle just made it come off as the author sniffing his own farts, which he probably does in his spare time. (This is not an insult.) I felt like Shteyngart was basically saying, "see what I did there? Do you get it?" to the reader the whole time. The book is also much too short for the amounts of different scenes and plotlines in this book: the five-three movement, Vera's biological mom, Vera's parents fighting, the role of AI, schoolyard drama, the Russian plot, and much more. It felt like the author was really trying to speed things along in an unsatisfactory way, which is the most obvious in the way that Vera "just happens" to discovers her biological mom's full name.
The political and sociological angles had a lot more potential, too, especially in its critique of nativism and right-wing populism, as expressed through the five-three movement and MOTH. The whole debate scene would have been better if we could actually see and hear what the arguments on both sides are. But instead, the author just rushes us along like someone hacked the AI car to drive at 200 pages per hour.
This book features a lot of dense political and sociological commentary delivered from the third-person viewpoint of a 10-year-old girl. I thought it was weird to set it in third person because the effect of having a young precocious protagonist is blunted when it is not in first person. The third person angle just made it come off as the author sniffing his own farts, which he probably does in his spare time. (This is not an insult.) I felt like Shteyngart was basically saying, "see what I did there? Do you get it?" to the reader the whole time. The book is also much too short for the amounts of different scenes and plotlines in this book: the five-three movement, Vera's biological mom, Vera's parents fighting, the role of AI, schoolyard drama, the Russian plot, and much more. It felt like the author was really trying to speed things along in an unsatisfactory way, which is the most obvious in the way that Vera "just happens" to discovers her biological mom's full name.
The political and sociological angles had a lot more potential, too, especially in its critique of nativism and right-wing populism, as expressed through the five-three movement and MOTH. The whole debate scene would have been better if we could actually see and hear what the arguments on both sides are. But instead, the author just rushes us along like someone hacked the AI car to drive at 200 pages per hour.
January 10, 2026
3.5 probably
I was mostly taken by the undercurrent of eerieness as you slowly understand the dystopian world that Vera is living in, slowly building until you hit (or get hit by) a very abrupt climax. Would have appreciated more world-building but understand that would have taken away from the authenticity of Vera's perspective (which was great). But I think a final chapter or an epilogue wouldn't have gone amiss.
I was mostly taken by the undercurrent of eerieness as you slowly understand the dystopian world that Vera is living in, slowly building until you hit (or get hit by) a very abrupt climax. Would have appreciated more world-building but understand that would have taken away from the authenticity of Vera's perspective (which was great). But I think a final chapter or an epilogue wouldn't have gone amiss.
December 1, 2025
“𝘚𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘪𝘢𝘯𝘪𝘴𝘵 𝘎𝘭𝘦𝘯𝘯 𝘎𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘩𝘶𝘮𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘢 𝘣𝘢𝘣𝘺 𝘱𝘢𝘴𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘮𝘦𝘭𝘰𝘥𝘺 𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘺𝘪𝘯𝘨 ‘𝘷𝘪𝘨𝘰𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘴𝘭𝘺’ 𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘪𝘢𝘯𝘰. 𝘏𝘦 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘴𝘰 𝘪𝘯 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘮𝘶𝘴𝘪𝘤 𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘮𝘢𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨, 𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥𝘯’𝘵 𝘩𝘦𝘭𝘱 𝘩𝘪𝘮𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘧. 𝘌𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘳 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘬 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵.”
All families are odd. Different needs. Different concerns. Different loves. Vera, in all her precociousness, is a child at the crosslines of words, their meanings, and finding the roots. Be it family, be it the drama.
Shteyngart churns out a story that is both charming and sweet, frivolous and completely New England. A sense of that Upper East Side privilege rounds out the story as a library read for boomers who think reading this will give them a sense of what all the c00l k!ds are saying these days. Kind of like an A24 film with too much film grain and too many sun flares with B-grade performances that make this bearable by the end, only to excuse you to say, “Welp! That was a movie!”
And welp! That was a book!
All families are odd. Different needs. Different concerns. Different loves. Vera, in all her precociousness, is a child at the crosslines of words, their meanings, and finding the roots. Be it family, be it the drama.
Shteyngart churns out a story that is both charming and sweet, frivolous and completely New England. A sense of that Upper East Side privilege rounds out the story as a library read for boomers who think reading this will give them a sense of what all the c00l k!ds are saying these days. Kind of like an A24 film with too much film grain and too many sun flares with B-grade performances that make this bearable by the end, only to excuse you to say, “Welp! That was a movie!”
And welp! That was a book!
July 29, 2025
“Vera” has an abundance of charm to go with the pathos and humor. Our protagonist is a 10 year-old precocious girl trying her best to grow up. Thankfully, she fails in this dubious pursuit. Along the way we root heavily for her as she marches bravely into a future we can only imagine.
Shteyngart captures the cruel absurdity of adult life through the eyes of a girl with a true heart. So, clearly that is heartbreaking enough. And she is an optimist who does not want to fool herself. One great kid. Shteyngart renders her with beautiful innovative writing that is never pretentious. When I find myself this attached to a novel it can be difficult review coherently so I will leave it at that. Highly recommended!!
Shteyngart captures the cruel absurdity of adult life through the eyes of a girl with a true heart. So, clearly that is heartbreaking enough. And she is an optimist who does not want to fool herself. One great kid. Shteyngart renders her with beautiful innovative writing that is never pretentious. When I find myself this attached to a novel it can be difficult review coherently so I will leave it at that. Highly recommended!!
June 24, 2025
Vera, or Faith by Gary Shteyngart
I’m a fan of Shteyngart’s and Vera, or Faith is a lovely book. Vera is a bright 10 year old living in New York City who attends a special public school for exceptionally students. She has her future mapped out—she’s going to be a “woman in STEM.” She also keeps lists. One list is of words she’s heard that she wants to learn. Her others list the best qualities of each of her parents (her father—a Russian immigrant with leftist politics who is trying to keep his left-leaning magazine afloat and her mother—actually, her step-mother but the only mother she’s ever known) to show to the other parent in an effort to keep her battling parents together.
Vera believes it is her responsibility to save her family and that if she fails they will be homeless and lost.
An unusual child, it seemed to me that Vera would fit on the autism spectrum, with her hand flapping and severe social awkwardness (her stepmom is training her in how to function in social situations which sometimes only serves to make Vera more self-conscious and confused than she already is—on the other hand, she certainly seems to need help as she feels like an outsider and is bullied by some of the more popular girls).
Vera wonders if her stepmom doesn’t prefer her younger brother, the mother’s biological son. She also wonders and worries about her father’s professional reputation and finances. As a reader, I had a very different perspective on the father Vera adores but the way the relationship and his role (in Vera’s life and that of the rest of the family—as well as professionally) was interesting and surprising.
Shteyngart writing is fluid, beautiful, and thoughtful. His characters are vivid and engaging—I cared very much about this child and her future but all the characters were strongly depicted.
The novel is often funny with an underlying sadness that engulfed me at the end. However, although I felt sad, I did not feel hopeless. Not with the possibility of a future with people like Vera and the people who love her as they all work to create a world filled with the possibility of that love.
Thanks to NetGalley and Random House for the ARC. Book to be published July 8, 2025
I’m a fan of Shteyngart’s and Vera, or Faith is a lovely book. Vera is a bright 10 year old living in New York City who attends a special public school for exceptionally students. She has her future mapped out—she’s going to be a “woman in STEM.” She also keeps lists. One list is of words she’s heard that she wants to learn. Her others list the best qualities of each of her parents (her father—a Russian immigrant with leftist politics who is trying to keep his left-leaning magazine afloat and her mother—actually, her step-mother but the only mother she’s ever known) to show to the other parent in an effort to keep her battling parents together.
Vera believes it is her responsibility to save her family and that if she fails they will be homeless and lost.
An unusual child, it seemed to me that Vera would fit on the autism spectrum, with her hand flapping and severe social awkwardness (her stepmom is training her in how to function in social situations which sometimes only serves to make Vera more self-conscious and confused than she already is—on the other hand, she certainly seems to need help as she feels like an outsider and is bullied by some of the more popular girls).
Vera wonders if her stepmom doesn’t prefer her younger brother, the mother’s biological son. She also wonders and worries about her father’s professional reputation and finances. As a reader, I had a very different perspective on the father Vera adores but the way the relationship and his role (in Vera’s life and that of the rest of the family—as well as professionally) was interesting and surprising.
Shteyngart writing is fluid, beautiful, and thoughtful. His characters are vivid and engaging—I cared very much about this child and her future but all the characters were strongly depicted.
The novel is often funny with an underlying sadness that engulfed me at the end. However, although I felt sad, I did not feel hopeless. Not with the possibility of a future with people like Vera and the people who love her as they all work to create a world filled with the possibility of that love.
Thanks to NetGalley and Random House for the ARC. Book to be published July 8, 2025
July 24, 2025
as a former precocious wasian child who went to Swarthmore (tho not as a woman in STEM), I loved narrator Vera—her charming blend of childish awkwardness, her voracious curiosity, her astute insights, her relationships with the adults who don't quite know what to do with her.
but as someone capable of, like, reading headlines and independent thought, the political critique fell incredibly flat. Shteyngart mostly presents barely-there exaggerations of contemporary politics that lack substantive critique beyond light satire. AI self-driving cars, NYC so-called intellectuals and their failed magazines, NYC trad wives and their pet project political salons, fears of children being groomed into being gay or trans, fears of reproductive-age women being trafficked... all felt *too* real and not in a good way, less a speculative dystopia illuminating unspoken truths about the world and more heavy-handed plotlines pulled straight from my Twitter feed. The most speculative element, a policy proposal which would grant weighted five-thirds of a regular vote to "exceptional Americans" (i.e. OG Mayflower white people), almost had something interesting to say about right-wing populism in modern America! But even that plotline floundered and lost momentum among the many overcrowded, overstated observations masquerading as insight and humor.
but as someone capable of, like, reading headlines and independent thought, the political critique fell incredibly flat. Shteyngart mostly presents barely-there exaggerations of contemporary politics that lack substantive critique beyond light satire. AI self-driving cars, NYC so-called intellectuals and their failed magazines, NYC trad wives and their pet project political salons, fears of children being groomed into being gay or trans, fears of reproductive-age women being trafficked... all felt *too* real and not in a good way, less a speculative dystopia illuminating unspoken truths about the world and more heavy-handed plotlines pulled straight from my Twitter feed. The most speculative element, a policy proposal which would grant weighted five-thirds of a regular vote to "exceptional Americans" (i.e. OG Mayflower white people), almost had something interesting to say about right-wing populism in modern America! But even that plotline floundered and lost momentum among the many overcrowded, overstated observations masquerading as insight and humor.
August 21, 2025
Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC of
Vera, or Faith.
I've never read this author before though I've heard of him.
I'm not a fan of novels narrated from a child's perspective; that's a very difficult POV to write from.
I liked Vera, her inner thoughts, her inability to understand idioms and metaphors, perhaps because of her cultural background.
I didn't like the narrative which was focused on racial injustice and the inequities of the political and social climate, not unlike what we're living through now.
I read to escape, to imagine, to learn, and I found parts of the narrative difficult, mostly because I didn't understand the point.
If the narrative had focused on Vera seeking her bio mom, making friends, spending time with her beloved aunt, navigating her own insular world and trying to understand her place in it, that would have worked.
But the complexities of her parents' issues coupled with the social and political climate Vera is growing up in and her biracial background made this a confusing read.
What's the takeaway? What am I supposed to learn from this?
What is the author trying to say?
The writing style was okay, but that might be due to Vera's POV.
It could also be this author's not for me.
I've never read this author before though I've heard of him.
I'm not a fan of novels narrated from a child's perspective; that's a very difficult POV to write from.
I liked Vera, her inner thoughts, her inability to understand idioms and metaphors, perhaps because of her cultural background.
I didn't like the narrative which was focused on racial injustice and the inequities of the political and social climate, not unlike what we're living through now.
I read to escape, to imagine, to learn, and I found parts of the narrative difficult, mostly because I didn't understand the point.
If the narrative had focused on Vera seeking her bio mom, making friends, spending time with her beloved aunt, navigating her own insular world and trying to understand her place in it, that would have worked.
But the complexities of her parents' issues coupled with the social and political climate Vera is growing up in and her biracial background made this a confusing read.
What's the takeaway? What am I supposed to learn from this?
What is the author trying to say?
The writing style was okay, but that might be due to Vera's POV.
It could also be this author's not for me.
March 4, 2025
I love weird girls! Our narrator Vera is 10 years old (11 in 8 months). As a reader we get to go on her curious and whimsical journey trying to understand the world around her. She is academically gifted but struggles in many other areas of her life. She is a keen observer but through her childlike eyes she is only able to parse together half truths of the world around her. I felt absolutely delighted by a notebook that she keeps throughout the book called her “Things I Still Need to Know Diary” where she records things she overhears and wants (needs) to make sense of. I absolutely fell in love with Vera and this book. Run, don’t walk to pick up a copy of this on July 8th!
March 16, 2025
Thanks to Netgalley and Random House for the ebook. Such a delightful comic novel set slightly in the future where America’s divides become a little more ingrained. We follow Vera, a top grade school student who is half Korean and half Russian and is growing up with a New England WASP stepmother and half brother. Sensitive Vera, who is constantly add words to look up, wants her parents to stay married (unlikely), make a friend (more likely) and try and find and meet her Korean birth mom. A fast and funny book that was surprisingly moving by the end.
July 23, 2025
I actually think writers for grown-ups often do teen protagonists better than YA authors, but boy they can’t do middle grade.
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