The New York Times writes about this new novel:
Then there’s Sam, who wants to write “the great Zionist novel.” Talia, Sam’s Israeli girlfriend, tells him he doesn’t love the land enough to write the great Zionist novel. There are other girls — “was he a small-souled coward, not simply to have two girlfriends?” — and other causes, but basically Sam is on a not untypical journey for a sad literary young man: a journey toward never writing his great epic, even though, in Sam’s case, he happily took a publisher’s advance. In some senses, Sam is the least unlovable of the trio. His bad character is the more comical and his shallowness seems connected, in a deep way, to the shallowness of the surrounding culture, which at once appears to promise him the world and throttle him to death. “The living writers of the world were Sam’s enemies, Sam’s nemeses,” Gessen writes. The best scene in the book arrives when Sam decides to call Google:
“‘Look,’ he said. ‘My Google is shrinking.’
“‘Excuse me?’
“‘My Google. I Google myself and every time it gets lower.’
“‘Right. Pages often go off-line and then they no longer show up on searches.’
“‘Yes, I understand that, but this is getting out of hand. I was in the mid-300s before. Now I’m at, like, 40,’ Sam lied.”
