Bookmarks: “Vera, or Faith” by Gary Shteyngart
Published July 2025, Random House
By Drew Foster
Ten-year-old Vera is an anxious girl. And why not? Her parents’ marriage is fraying, angry nativists are marching outside her apartment building, she’s mocked by her fellow students, and her only friend is an AI chessboard that doesn’t like to lose. She’s desperate to keep her family together, but a longing to find her birthmother and a curiosity surrounding her father’s private affairs threaten to upend her homelife. Vera has a lot on her plate.
Gary Shteyngart’s newest novel, “Vera, or Faith,” is a humorous, cutting depiction of a near-future, totalitarian-leaning America observed through the eyes of a precocious youngster trying to make sense of a rapidly changing society. It’s a poignant, timely book that will sit with you long after you turn the final page.
“Vera, or Faith” is a slim novel crafted in readable prose. But it carries a heft that outweighs its size. Shteyngart takes on big themes – childhood anxiety, democracy in decline, wealth and status, invasive technology, marriage, and privilege. And framing these themes through the eyes of a ten-year-old is a neat device. Vera is figuring out the world as she goes along; she doesn’t possess the cold, hard ethos of an adult. And Shteyngart deftly applies a “show-don’t-tell” technique that avoids pontification, allowing readers to form their own conclusions. Although it’s fairly clear where Shteyngart stands with this overtly political novel, it doesn’t feel as if he’s haranguing or lecturing.
Shteyngart’s near-future America is, unfortunately, not difficult to imagine. Besides the frequent nativist marches, we learn that pro-life states have installed a “cycle-through” policy where women of child-bearing age must receive pregnancy tests upon arrival and exit to deter those seeking abortions across state lines. There’s also the Five-Three initiative that proposes giving Americans who can trace their ancestry back to the Revolutionary War a five-thirds supermajority vote, nearly doubling their voting power.
Vera’s father, a witty opportunist of Russian dissent, is the editor of a respectable-but-struggling magazine and an overindulging drinker. Her stepmother, Anne Mom, is a blue-blood East Coast WASP concerned equally with family appearances and the anti-democratic shift fracturing American society. Vera’s Korean-American birthmother, Mom Mom, has been absent from her life since infancy.
In the midst of political turmoil, we watch as Vera’s father takes ethical detours to hold onto his professional clout and Anne Mom fights for social justice from her perch atop the ivory tower. Meanwhile, Vera wants just three things: to keep her family together, make a friend at school, and locate her birthmother. The plan Vera hatches to achieve the latter feels like the book’s only implausible reach. Still, the ending manages to confirm both the best and worst of Shteyngart’s near-future America – love continues to conquer all, even in a police state that threatens everyone.
“Vera, or Faith” is available through the Hawai‘i Public Library system. Request a copy. It’s a book that will make you think.
