VERA, OR FAITH by Gary Shteyngart — Review by Stella

Meet Vera. She has lists. One list for Daddy and another for Anne Mom. Ten reasons each for staying together. Except one list only gets to 6. Vera is 10; she’s a brainiac — side-lined at school as ‘Facts Girl’ and trying to keep her ‘monkey brain’ in check. She’s Korean-American and half-Jewish with Russian grandparents. Vera, her little brother Dylan (cute, but mostly annoying), and her Daddy, Igor Shmulkin, and step-Mom Anne Bradford, a progressive blue-blood, live a modern comfortable life in an American city not too far in the future. Daddy’s trying to save a literary journal — hoping for the Rhodesian Billionaire to come through. Anne Mom is just trying to keep the household running smoothly while corralling her friends into good causes. As Daddy and Anne Mom descend into daily battles, Vera is having her own internal battles. Will she ever have a best friend? Will she find her birth mother, Mom Mom, before it’s too late? Is it safe on the streets anymore? America is in freefall, although for Vera at her good school, in her room of her own, in a safe neighbourhood, and with Kaspie (her AI device named after Gary Kasparov) at hand, it’s all at a distance. Until it’s not. Vera, or Faith is a very funny, but biting, satire. Observed through the eyes of a girl sideways to the world, Vera is the perfect vehicle for this look at a messed-up world, not that you will despair outright. You will be too busy laughing, liking Vera, and cheering her on. Fingers crossed that she wins the debate with her new-found friend, encouraging her to keep asking questions of her chess companion Kaspie (made in Korea), and to keep using that ‘monkey brain’ to solve the puzzle of Mom Mom. Yet the world will crash down, and ultimately Vera, who is a ten-year-old girl will find solace where she least expects it. So this is a sad, funny, good story with a rumbling darkness, a thunder clap of what is to come if we aren’t very careful.