Gary Shteyngart’s grown-up satire

Literature is, quite fortunately, full of young heroes determined to solve, or at least confront, problems created by their elders and not-betters. There is the stalwart Meg in Madeleine L’Engle’s classic A Wrinkle in Time, taking on the mysteries of the universe; 15-year-old Christopher in Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, whose investigations into the death of his neighbour’s hound lead him into deep waters; Jonathan Safran Foer’s Oskar Schell in Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, who seeks connection to a father killed in 9/11. And not forgetting Scout Finch in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. You get the idea.

A youthful protagonist offers a sidelong view of the adult world. The narrative is immediately layered, as the reader adds their more sophisticated understanding to the child’s naivety. Our protective feelings are stirred; it’s hard not to take such characters into our hearts.

And so, to the list above we can add Vera Bradford-Shmulkin, the 10-year-old narrator of Gary Shteyngart’s sixth novel. Shteyngart, who emigrated to the US from the Soviet Union when he was a boy, has good reason to understand that children often know much more than adults give them credit for. His debut, The Russian Debutante’s Handbook, was published over two decades ago to great acclaim: in that novel, and in books such as Absurdistan and Super Sad True Love Story, he brings together a deep understanding of the immigrant experience, with sharp humour and style – and a profound humanity.

Vera lives what seems like a privileged life in an unnamed city that closely resembles Manhattan; the world she inhabits is worryingly adjacent to our own. The family’s self-driving car is called Stella and is capable of taking Vera on a solo trip cross-country; she plays chess with a computer, Kaspie, whose AI persona has the glint of emotional reinforcement that we can find right now in ChatGPT, taken just a few alarming stages further.

And where we have Donald Trump’s Maga, Vera watches Moth marches out of her window. The acronym stands for March of the Hated – minority groups (black people, Hasidic Jews and others) who are, apparently, in favour of a new government proposal: to give five-thirds of a regular vote to “exceptional Americans”, or “those who landed on the shores of our continent before or during the revolutionary war, but were exceptional enough not to arrive in chains”, as Vera’s teacher, Ms Tedeschi, says. If you think it’s puzzling that they are clearly acting against their own interests, look around you: how many in Maga hats will lose their healthcare thanks to their president’s Big Beautiful Bill?

The trouble is, Vera herself is an unexceptional American. She is half-Russian Jewish, half-Korean; she calls her father’s wife “Anne Mom” – “Mom Mom” is her biological mother, who, as far as she understands, abandoned them when she was just a baby. Anne Mom is a privileged activist against the Moth movement; Vera’s father, Igor, is a magazine editor in thrall to the whims of a billionaire he hopes will buy his publication.

One of the strengths of this inventive novel is the way Vera remains at a remove from the atmosphere of political threat that will be all too familiar, alas, to the reader. She accepts it, in the way that children must accept their circumstances, but her parents’ distress and the fractures in their marriage weigh on her. Vera knows she’s smart – she goes to a school for clever kids, she has been told she’s special – so if there are problems, she should be able to solve them. “She Had to Hold the Family Together” is the first chapter’s title. She keeps a journal – “Things I Still Need to Know Diary” – and in this close, third-person narrative, Shteyngart puts many words in quotes: “Anne Mom was ‘irate’ about her teacher being ‘fascist’.” It’s a technique that underlines the gulf between grownups and children, and the ironic gap between what grownups say and what grownups do.

It wouldn’t do to reveal too much of the plot, as Igor’s business unravels and Anne Mom makes a stand against Moth that involves throwing cocktail parties. When Vera overhears what sounds like news of her long-lost Mom Mom, she decides she must seek her out: her quest, her wish to solve the mystery of her life, serves to further reveal Shteyngart’s very American dystopia.

Occasionally the mechanism of the novel shows through: Vera has a little brother, Dylan, Anne Mom’s biological child. We know he is, therefore, an “exceptional American”, but he doesn’t have much of a role besides that. No matter; it is Vera, and her faith, that holds us within this novel’s pages. This is satire full of feeling, saturated with dark, comedic grief for what we all could lose.

Vera, Or Faith by Gary Shteyngart is published by Atlantic (£16.99). Order a copy from The Observer Shop for £15.29. Delivery charges may apply

Photography by Alamy