A narrator can make or break a book. Holden Caulfield from “The Catcher in the Rye” is too whiny for some; Humbert Humbert of “Lolita” fame is almost too effective in his perversion for others. Author Gary Shteyngart clearly takes inspiration from the exacting diaristic narration of authors like Vladimir Nabokov. But what propels his form of narration in his latest novel, “Vera, or Faith,” beyond even Humbert’s and Hermann’s, is the direction Shteyngart brings his lens. That is, down. “Vera, Or Faith,” which is told from the perspective of a precocious 10-year-old named Vera, throws itself fully into its limited point of view.
Vera is extremely internal. She catalogs the world around her, an outsider who is desperate to feel included by the people in her life. Keeping a “Things I Still Need to Know” diary, she dutifully logs her cerebral father’s political spitfire, itching to be more like him. She seeks friends at school, returning home to her AI-chessboard companion, and she searches for the truth about her birth mother, looking for a bond that transcends that of her mixed family. Vera loves her stepmother and half-brother, but feels isolated by them. This feeling only grows over the course of the novel, as the political ire of the world starts to leak into her home and her life.
In school, friendless Vera is assigned a debate partner, and they are given the task to debate a recently proposed amendment. Colloquially called five-three, the amendment would grant Americans whose families have been in the country longer (“five-threes”) a vote that counts for five-thirds of everyone else’s. Russian-Korean Vera steps up to the task of navigating her family’s academic expectations, staunchly and innocently eager to defend what amounts to her own disenfranchisement.
Vera’s lack of awareness of the weight this class assignment holds, despite the knowing glances of the adults around her, adds to the casual dystopia that Shteyngart creates. It’s eerie to watch Vera defend a bleak future for herself — one that doesn’t feel too far off from our own reality — in a completely uncritical manner. Vera is unaware of what she is denigrating, unaware of the complexities that cross even the threshold of her own home. She is focused solely on more age-appropriate concerns: winning a friend in her debate partner and receiving positive attention from her father.
It’s these dilemmas Shteyngart uses in order to envelop you in Vera’s world, to endear her to his reader. By muffling the problems pushing against her personal bubble and focusing on her humorous misreadings and low-stakes schemes, Vera becomes impossible not to root for. “Vera, or Faith” omits and enthralls; the questions you most want answered about the book’s imagined America aren’t lingered on, instead bumped for the melodrama of her small life. But what Vera cares about, we care about. The dynamics between her and her five-three half-brother and what has happened to her Mom Mom, take precedence over the shifted borders and amendment conventions in her periphery. That is, until the politics ultimately cannot be ignored, and they collide with Vera’s world in a caustic way.
“Vera, or Faith” expertly navigates the complex dynamics of mixed families in the face of a scarily plausible future, but never loses sight of its emotional core. Its climactic scene is heartbreaking and beautiful, the pressure cooker of Vera’s internal world finally bursting, and her understanding of the world with it.
Senior Arts Editor Cora Rolfes can be reached at corolfes@umich.edu.
