Ten-year-old Vera’s life is defined by all the things she has to do. She has to get through the first day of school. She --- the friendless, smartest kid in the class --- has to survive recess. She has to fall asleep, which is not easy when your room is on the other side of the apartment from the rest of the family: “An ancient fire escape opened up directly to Vera’s bedroom and she very much feared a murderer would get to her before Daddy could protect her, although as an ‘intellectual’ he prided himself on not being very athletic.”

Vera has to hold her family together. Her father, Igor Schmulkin, is an immigrant Russian leftist married to Anne Mom, a blue-blooded trust-fund stay-at-home wife and mother. Daddy recently has become the editor of a magazine that he hopes to position well enough to be bought out by a Rhodesian Billionaire. Her little half-brother, Dylan, likes to drop his trousers and shout, “Look at my penis!” Anne Mom is kind, but Vera wonders about her Mom Mom. Daddy has told her only that she was Korean and had left them when Vera was a baby.

"Vera, with her earnestness, sweetness, vulnerability and determination, will win over the most hard-hearted reader. In short, you may read this clever and surprising novel in one sitting. And you very well may turn right around and read it again."

Things start to look up for Vera when her fifth-grade teacher, Ms. Tedeschi, chooses her to debate the pro side of the Five-Three, a proposed constitutional amendment that would give five-thirds of a regular vote to Americans who can trace their ancestry to those who came to America before or during the Revolutionary War. “And not in chains,” adds Ms. Tedeschi. Vera is happy to agree because her debate backup is Yumi, the one person in class who is nice to her. Maybe she can make a friend.

So begins Gary Shteyngart’s fresh, funny and scary novel in a world not quite ours --- not yet anyway. Their autonomous car Stella talks to them and knows them well enough to suggest a different route home from school when a pro-Five-Three demonstration invades their neighborhood. Anne Mom dresses them in T-shirts against Five-Three and “the Cycle Through states that checked women’s ‘cycles’ upon entry and exit (perhaps they would even check Aunt Cecile’s bicycle if she crossed state lines, though it only had one gear) and made them pee in a cup to make sure they hadn’t gotten ‘preggers’ and then had an ‘abortion,’ which was still a word that Vera did not fully understand.” Vera has a talking chessboard named Kaspie, who is smart enough to beat her four times out of five. But while their world is different from ours, Vera’s worries are timeless --- keeping her parents together despite their fights, not ending up homeless, and avoiding class bullies.

Yumi and Vera hit it off at the debate prep sessions at Yumi’s apartment. Yumi has the hots for Stephen, one of their debate opponents, but both girls are dead serious about winning. Vera, who has overheard her parents discussing whether or not to tell her someone has cancer, becomes more obsessed with finding Mom Mom. Yumi (unlike Vera) has access to the internet. And Kaspie even provides some clues. Meanwhile, Vera becomes suspicious of her dad’s newly found freedom with money, since the Rhodesian Billionaire has declined to buy his magazine. Is he a traitor? She is not above a little spying to find out.

Vera, with her earnestness, sweetness, vulnerability and determination, will win over the most hard-hearted reader. In short, you may read this clever and surprising novel in one sitting. And you very well may turn right around and read it again.