Vera, or Faith

The book is about Vera a very smart, precocious, somewhat autistic fifth grader whose family life is complicated. She is Korean on her birth mother’s side from which genetic fountain she receives beautiful cheek bones. ‘Anne Mom’ is her de facto (on Vera’s word list) mother because her ‘Mom mom’ left when she was still just an infant because (she is told) she was such a difficult baby. Anne Mom’s heritage goes back to the American Revolution: she is a blue blood with a (small) trust fund. Her father is a Russian-emigre entrepreneur/editor/publisher who has been fired from several magazines and is trying to start another one. And finally she has a 6-yo(?) half brother Dylan who frequently takes off his pants and runs around commanding everyone to look at his penis in order get attention.

Her parents fought every day on a variety of subjects, but especially about how she and Dylan were to be raised. Anne Mom wanted a lot of structure, but Daddy said childhood “should just happen,” like it had happened to him, and that until you went to grad school “nothing really mattered,” it was all just a “neoliberal frog-march of the damned.” (Daddy supplied a lot of the words for her Things I Still Need to Know Diary.)

Her story is set in a near future upper-east-side NYC, in an America heading closer and closer to authoritarian government, to wit the shameless propagandizing by the government for a 5/3 amendment to the Constitution (think of it as the opposite of the 3/5 clause), passage of which, seems to be a fait accompli. And of course ‘Anne Mom’, every bit a white do-good liberal, is fundraising from her friends to oppose the amendment. Additionally this future has anti-abortion states enforcing laws allowing them to bloodtest women at their borders to detect pregnancy and discourage illegal out-of-state abortions. On the bright side, the family has an autonomous car that they have named Stella:

“I’m so tired,” Stella the Car said, mimicking Anne Mom, as she dropped them off by the basement entrance on the other side of their building. Stella “knew her audience” (Anne Mom) and the mirroring technique well.

Vera’s story is structured as a series of chapters with each chapter titled for a challenge that 10-year-old Vera faces, beginning with the words “She had to…”, for example, “Chapter 1: She Had to Hold the Family Together”. That chapter title neatly encapsulates the biggest challenge in Vera’s story: the discord between her mother and father. But that’s just one of several of Vera’s problems, including making friends, getting good grades (so she can go to Swarthmore), worrying about whether she is loved as much as her younger brother Dylan (Dad Igor and Anne’s biological son.)

This book manages to be very funny frequently (but not exclusively) by using Vera’s sophisticated ear-hustling and mimicry to mirror the adults (especially her father) in her life. Those adults have real existential fears and hence there is the constant background tinge of fear and sadness to the tone. Lastly, this book is really charming because Vera is sincere and innocent.