Very different, high energy, fast moving take on a group of people sitting out the pandemic together. I didn’t love it but it made me smile at times and I was glad I wasn’t in the house.

A quick and easy read that I found myself picking up after a long day to unwind. The characters are beautifully written and I came to love them within the first few pages and was rooting for them all the way to the end. At times I wanted to stop reading because I just wanted the experience to go on for longer.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

An interesting take on how to get through the early parts of the pandemic, centered around the somewhat eccentric Senderorvsky and his wife who gather a collection of friends to join them at their country retreat to sit out the lock down and avoid Covid 19.
The cast of characters all brought a unique voice to the table although a more unlikely group I think it would be hard to find and the relationships that arise are less believable then I would hope for- maybe because the characters just don't seem to mesh well romantically.

Overall an interesting read

It is March 2020 and the pandemic is unfolding. A group of six friends have all gathered at a country house to see it out..
Six months down the line and will they still be friends? What secrets will be revealed amongst this dysfunctional group?

The novel centres on a group of friends of Senderovsky, a writer, and his wife Masha who have been invited to the couple's country estate in New York for the summer to attempt to escape the Covid virus. It revolves around their various relationships and couplings during this time. I found parts of the book fascinating but others fairly long-winded and padded out. Overall an interesting read but not as riveting as I'd expected..

I was so excited to read this, having heard great things about it. While a pandemic novel might not be to everyone’s taste; I really enjoyed this look at a group of old friends and friends of friends thrown together in a country house to wait out the lockdowns. Humorous and satirical, Shteyngart’s characters are sharply drawn. Thanks NetGalley!

It's March 2020 and a calamity is unfolding. A group of friends and friends-of-friends gathers in a country house to wait out the pandemic. Over the next six months, new friendships and romances will take hold, while old betrayals will emerge, forcing each character to reevaluate whom they love and what matters most. The unlikely cast of characters includes a Russian-born novelist; his Russian-born psychiatrist wife; their precocious child obsessed with K-pop; a struggling Indian American writer; a wildly successful Korean American app developer; a global dandy with three passports; a Southern flamethrower of an essayist; and a movie star, the Actor, whose arrival upsets the equilibrium of this chosen family.
Overall, I really enjoyed this well-plotted story. It was intense and fast paced and I raced through this in a few hours, frantically turning the pages, desperate to find out how it was all going to be resolved.

This is my first Gary Shteyngart book. I was drawn to read it because I recently heard him interviewed. He came across as smart, witty and with a breadth of views on interesting and important contemporary questions. My first observation is that GS reads as he talks...rapidly, eclectically and satirically. Although there is ridicule, it is gentle and thoughtful. I have to admit that despite enjoying the vast middle of the novel, I personally found "Our Country Friends" a bit of a slow-burn. It took me a good quarter of the book to really get into it. I also found some of the last part a little over-the-top (its hard to say why without introducing a spoiler), but persevered and believe I (possibly?) understood something crucial as a result. Still I enjoyed GS's writing enough that I will now try and read some of the previous GS books and also explore some Chekhov. I am very grateful to Atlantic Books for a no obligation advance review copy.

I was keen to read this book - a 'Covid19 novel', and the blurb is enticing, but much as I wanted to enjoy it, even though my heart and mind were open and keen, I found most of it frustrating. In terms of characterisation, it feels like Shteyngart is trying to be inclusive. Nothing wrong with that at all. But it would be good to have developed the characters into believable ones. The romances are, in the main, strangely conveyed. I mean by that, some are unconvincing. I mean, I know lockdown and the pandemic was a weird time, but still. I'm still not sure what happens about half way through when the narrative changes into a peculiar hallucinatory style. This had the effect of doing the opposite of developing the characters, instead, slotted them into cliche. The impact then on the theme was massive. One thing, the humour, was sometimes executed quite well, but it was seriously easy to miss it amongst the rest of the narrative glitches. Hard going, reading this novel, I'm sad to say.

Thankyou for giving me the chance to read this book in advance. Very appropriate for current climate of covid and actually read from start to finish. Another good read to fill my day