Our Country Friends

Our Country Friends, Gary Shteyngart’s fifth novel, was published on November 2, 2021, by Random House. Shteyngart, who writes literary fiction and often approaches topics from a satirical lens, tackles the global COVID-19 pandemic in Our Country Friends. The novel belongs to the emergent genre of “pandemic literature” and takes place over the first six months of the crisis, using circumstances similar to the early stages of the pandemic lockdowns. There are virtual doctors’ appointments, social distancing, and masking, albeit at an isolated and relatively safe country estate. One of the primary characters, Sasha Senderovsky, shares a similar background as the author; like Shteyngart, Senderovsky is an author who was born in St. Petersburg before coming to the US as a young child. This guide explores themes of isolation and loneliness as well as the conflicts between rural and urban residents in areas such as upstate New York, where the novel takes place.

This guide references the 2022 Random House Trade Paperback Edition.

Content Warning: This guide contains references to the murder of George Floyd and child abuse, as well as depictions of racism and antisemitism. In addition, the source text uses racist and antisemitic language, which is replicated in this guide only in direct quotes of the source material.

Plot Summary

In upstate New York, it is March 2020 and the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Sasha Senderovsky, his wife, Masha, and their adoptive daughter, Nat, prepare to host long-term guests at the bungalows behind their home, which they call the House on the Hill. The first to arrive is Ed Kim, Senderovsky’s college friend whom he collects at the train station. When they return, Masha grills Ed over his travel history given the social distancing rules for the house. Meanwhile, Karen Cho, Senderovsky’s childhood friend and founder of the Tröö Emotions app—an app that uses a picture of a couple looking at each other to determine whether they are in love—drives to the house. She stops at a sheep farm nearby and sees a child singing and dancing to the music of the K-pop band BTS. The child turns out to be Nat, and after a brief re-introduction, Karen takes her home. Masha is relieved, fearing that Nat was lost, and scolds Senderovsky when he leaves to pick up their other childhood friend, Vinod, instead of staying to comfort their daughter.

Senderovsky collects Vinod from the bus terminal and brings him back to the House on the Hill. Vinod is a former adjunct professor working in a family restaurant, and due to a bout with lung cancer, he is missing part of a lung. He possesses a grim outlook for the pandemic and is expecting to die, bringing his will and other paperwork with him to the House on the Hill. When they return to the house, Vinod asks Senderovsky if he still has the manuscript of his unpublished novel. Senderovsky tells him no, despite knowing its exact location in the attic. As the group prepares for dinner, Masha tells Karen that Vinod still loves her, as he has for the past few decades, and Karen denies it, hoping that he does despite never loving him back.

Dee Cameron, a former student of Senderovsky and essayist who focuses on her origins in a poor, white community, is the next to arrive. When she settles in at the table, she notices that Ed takes an immediate liking to her. Just as Senderovsky is about to make a toast, the Actor arrives. The Actor is there to help Senderovsky finish a pilot script for a show. The Actor reserves little patience for Senderovsky, and toward the end of the meal, he and Dee try out Karen’s Tröö Emotions app and the resulting picture shows them in love. When Ed mentions some antisemitic and racist posters he saw at the train station, Masha warns the group of the conservative leanings of the town around them. The dinner ends, though Senderovsky, Karen, and Vinod stay up. Masha watches from her window as they break her social distancing rules. The next morning, before anyone rises, Senderovsky buries Vinod’s novel in the front yard, although Nat, always up early, sees him do so.

After everyone wakes, the group settles into their routines. Ed and Dee go for a walk and gossip about the rest of the group, and both wonder if the other would be a good relationship partner during quarantine. Senderovsky meets with the Actor, who criticizes his work and tells him that they must scrap it. After their meeting, Senderovsky runs errands. While he is away, Nat brings Karen to the spot of the buried novel, and they uncover it. Karen recognizes it and brings it back to her bungalow, swearing Nat to secrecy. The relative peace of the day is interrupted by the Actor’s screaming. The water in his bungalow cut out and he is on the lawn, naked, with shampoo in his eyes. Masha leads him inside to the bathroom, where she keeps buckets of water for this situation and washes him. With some encouragement, she washes all of him, her touch turning sexual. The Actor feels entitled to her, and despite initial concerns that he could be “canceled” for such an act, he plans on it happening again. Masha leaves him feeling wanted and loved for the first time in a long time.

Back in his bungalow, the Actor is visited by Vinod, who comes looking for a book. He finds Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov and goes and reads in the meadow, despite an approaching storm, where he wonders if he is already intubated and hallucinating or in a grand simulation. Ed cooks dinner that night and the Actor antagonizes his fellow guests, including saying that he believes married people should conduct affairs, while moving closer to Masha under the table. Masha is made more uncomfortable when Nat, who goes on a dark tangent about death after Ed brings up climate change, listens to Karen more easily than she would to her own mother. The Actor then asks Vinod about love. Vinod openly admits to everyone that he still loves Karen and makes peace with the fact that she does not love him back. That night, as a storm rages outside, Senderovsky wakes to see a black pickup truck in the driveway. He has seen it before and worries that its driver has ill intentions. He goes out to confront it, only to narrowly miss being crushed by a falling tree limb. When he gets up, the truck is gone.

Two weeks pass at the House on the Hill and Masha relaxes the social distancing rules even as the infection numbers rise in the city. They are relieved to be away from the mayhem but grapple with guilt at their privilege to escape. With the showers still not fixed, Masha continues to help the Actor bathe, forcing Senderovsky to overextend himself with another contractor. In an effort to stop the affair and help his script, he tasks Dee with speaking to the Actor about it, hoping that it will spark a relationship. Perceiving the Actor’s feelings toward Dee, Senderovsky offers to set the Actor up on a walk with her. The two go on a walk, find an abandoned international camp, and have sex on its stage, beginning a new romance. While they are there, the black pickup parks nearby and shines its headlights at them.

Karen and Nat grow closer, waking up an hour early to practice Korean vocabulary and bond over BTS. She reads Vinod’s novel, remembering the struggle she, Senderovsky, and Vinod all faced with their abusive and judgmental parents. She begins to wonder if she can love him back, and one night, when he kisses her, she kisses back. They begin a romantic relationship, and when she brings him back to her bungalow, he finds the novel. He storms out and confronts Senderovsky on the porch, slapping and knocking him over. As Dee and the Actor grow closer, Senderovsky’s script takes off, and the Actor convinces him to give himself and Dee the main house so he can work on the script in pre-production, as it is the only place on the estate with Wi-Fi. The romance between the Actor and Dee is a social media hit until Dee’s essay on Gone With the Wind comes under criticism after the murder of George Floyd. Because her writings align her with police forces, the Actor’s team encourages him to leave her.

The tension between the Actor and Dee deepens when Karen and Nat are nearly run over by the black pickup truck. To make matters worse, tensions rise when Dee tries to get everyone to disclose their net worth while she also questions the lack of LGBTQIA+ diversity in their group. She is brushed off and later that night, when a video of the Actor and Dee having sex at the camp leaks, the Actor leaves. Nat, seeing him leave in the early hours of the morning, chases after him, only to fall and skin her knee.

July 4 arrives, and in the absence of the Actor, life at the House on the Hill improves. Everyone is kinder and despite his show being officially canceled, Senderovsky is happy. Dee and Ed begin a romantic relationship and Dee feels more supported and appreciated with Ed than she did with the Actor. Ed even cooks a BTS dinner for Nat and in the happy glow of the meal, the Actor reappears. He comes back hoping to speak with Dee, and after Senderovsky refuses to help him, even with the offer of helping Senderovsky write his scripts, the Actor meets with Karen. Vinod convinces Karen that she must help the Actor get over Dee by persuading him that the Tröö Emotions picture is fake. She does so, but the Actor panics and flees, leaving his car. Despite his flight, he did leave something with the group: COVID-19. Because of her proximity to the Actor, who was showing symptoms, Karen begins quarantining and masking. Vinod, not able to give up their affection, waits until she is asleep one night to kiss her.

Vinod falls seriously ill, infected with COVID-19. He spends his days in and out of fever dreams, remembering the earlier stages of his life with Senderovsky and Karen and reliving alternate lives with them. The Actor, who fled to the abandoned camp, performs every day on the stage for himself and the black pickup truck. He rediscovers himself, and when he is ready, the driver of the truck, a fan, brings him back to the house. He and the others perform Uncle Vanya for Vinod, who seems to be on the mend, but even with the performance, the Actor does not receive the forgiveness he wishes for. Vinod asks Masha not to let Senderovsky and Karen ignore his wish not to be hospitalized and to instead let him die with his friends in peace. They do not respect his wishes, and he is soon airlifted to a hospital, where a month later, Karen and Senderovsky collect his belongings after his death. As the group, minus the Actor, gathers to commemorate Vinod, Senderovsky, and Karen sign paperwork. She is buying the House on the Hill with plans to build her own house and allow Senderovsky and his family to continue using theirs. She and Masha will co-parent Nat while Senderovsky works to publish Vinod’s novel and write new ones of his own.