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1-Page Summary of Super Sad True Love Story
Overall Summary
Gary Shteyngart’s 2010 novel Super Sad True Love Story is a futuristic tale about love, mortality, family and technology. It tells the story of America’s fall from grace as it gets overtaken by new economies. The book has an old-time Russian Jewish protagonist named Lenny Abramov, who falls in love with a Korean American woman named Eunice Park through their online messages.
Lenny spends a year in Italy and returns to America. He notices that the country is changing rapidly, but he’s more concerned with his love for Eunice than anything else. Lenny comes up with six goals: working hard for Joshie, protecting himself from Joshie, loving Eunice, caring about his friends, being nice to his parents and celebrating what he has. However, some of these help him while others lead him towards despair.
In the society in which Lenny and Eunice live, youth, sex, and data are all that matter. People use their äppärät (a device similar to an iPhone) to access the world around them through streams of information about others’ lives as well as buy new things. The populace rates each other on a scale from one to ten based on how fuckable they are. Eunice initially embodies these values but she eventually learns that there is more to life than just being young and fuckable.
As the society around them falls apart, Low Net Worth Individuals (LNWIs) targeted by the rising authoritarian regime revolt. Eunice becomes involved in their cause, along with the cause of elderly people who live in her building and are victims of discrimination. Her desire to do well in life connects her to her sister and father. Although both Eunice and Lenny have been abused by their families, they call upon their cultural heritage to inspire them during this time of crisis.
Lenny learns to accept the death that everyone else is afraid of at some point. This is a story about mortality, and it applies to individuals as well as America. Joshie steals Lenny’s girlfriend and helps kill his friend, but he also eventually realizes that trying to stay young forever isn’t worth it. With humor and tenderness, Lenny uses his diary entries along with Eunice’s words to make books relevant again by questioning our use of technology in society today.
Chapter 4: “The Only Man for Me: From the GlobalTeens Account of Eunice Park”
Eunice Park’s GlobalTeens account is back, and it tells her to stop typing so much. She should switch to images mode instead. Eunice wants to talk in person with a friend, but she can’t because they’re both online. So she messages Grillbitch about how Ben doesn’t want to be with her anymore after their date last night. She says that he got “all intro” when she told him that his feet smelled during sex, and he turned off his äppärät so he wouldn’t have to see or hear how upset she was getting at the time. Even though they had sex anyway, it wasn’t as good for either of them. Afterward, Eunice felt ashamed and undeserving of being with someone like Ben. She also explains why her family has been going through some rough times lately: domestic abuse from her father and financial problems due to money lost overseas by other relatives.
Grillbitch is sympathetic to Eunice’s situation, as she knows that parents can be disappointing. Grillbitch encourages Eunice by saying that Ben clearly thinks she is a slut, and also confides in her about the world feeling overwhelming.
The next day, June 7th, Eunice’s mother messages her again. She explains that before their Reverend, she apologized to her father and he promised to pray when he was angry before hitting her. They also prayed for Sally and Eunice who they came to America for but didn’t know it would be better than Korea.
