Still Here

Still Here by Lara Vapnyar   320 pages

In her seventh novel, author Lara Vapynyar deals with the immigrant experience and identity, specifically a person’s online identity after his or her demise.

The novel centers around four Russian immigrants, friends since their school days. Now in their mid-40s, the four have come to the crossroads that often plague the lives of the middle-aged. The friends---Vica, Vadik, Sergey and Regina---all live in New York City.

Sergey and Vica are married and have a son, Eric. Sergey is constantly being laid off from his job as a financial analyst. Vica works as a medical technician at a local cancer treatment center. Just after the story opens, the couple split. Sergey goes to stay with Vadik and decides to devote all his time to developing an app that he calls “Virtual Grave.” The idea is that the app will peruse a person’s emails, text, voice mails, etc. to continue to recreate his or her online presence after death.

Vadik  is a programmer and is single. He lives the bachelor life, dating woman after woman. I thought he was the lesser drawn of the characters. He had been in love with Rachel, but there were two Rachel’s in Vadik’s life, referred to as Rachel 1 and Rachel 2. I found that utterly confusing.

Then there is Regina. A famous literary translator back in Russia, she spends her days grieving over her lost career and her mother. She’s marred to Bob, a wealthy American. Readers never get to see Bob except in passing and when he shows up, it is sometimes confusing because I always had trouble remembering who he was.

The book seems less to do with app and how it would than it does the four trying to navigate the daily struggle of life. I also had trouble in remembering who Vica and Vadik were…I kept getting them confused.

The story didn’t grab me. I plodded along with, much like the characters do in their lives. The book was okay, but I’ve read better books that deal with the same subject (virtual life after death) that were much better. I did like all the literary references. I give Still Here 3 out of 5 stars.

I received this book from Blogging for Books in exchange for this review.