Divide Me by Zero by Lara Vapnyar

Title: Divide Me by Zero

Author: Lara Vapnyar

Published: 2019

Type: Fiction(ish)

Pages: 353

ps: Sorry for the 2008-ish computer selfie…

Love was awful! Love was like cancer! The affection that grew too large, its cells multiplying with amazing speed, forming growths that kept getting large and larger, taking up the space reserved for the good working organs, pressing on them, squeezing them out, not letting them work. And the pain! I couldn’t possibly imagine the pain! The last thing I should want was love. 

In Brief: 

A very dark, very funny, very Russian book featuring love, family, emigration, and math. Not the most profound read, but highly entertaining. 

Rating: 4.2

Synopsis:

As a child, Katya’s mother taught her that math holds all the answers. After she dies, a grief-stricken, heart-broken, middle-aged Katya goes through the notes her mother left behind, the framework for her last project, “a math textbook that would guide you through life,” that she never had the chance to finish. These notes, in turn, become the framework of this novel, as Katya traces her history and tries to put the pieces of her life back together. (Note: it is also very similar to the life of the actual writer, Lara Vapnyar)

Katya grew up in the Soviet Union where she was profoundly influenced by her mother’s great love for her deceased father, and for math. These opposing values – wild passion and cold practicality – continually battle it out in Katya’s three major romances. 

First, as a teenager, she falls obsessively in love with a schoolteacher called B., who returns her affections but is too cowardly to commit to her, and eventually moves to the US with his wife and child. 

Though initially brokenhearted, not long later Katya falls in love with and marries Len. They move to the US with her mother and have two children together, though their love quickly vanishes. In the US, Katya becomes an English teacher, then a novelist. B. comes back into her life; they fall in love again and begin an affair, though he still won’t leave his wife. 

Last, Katya begins a whirlwind romance with Victor, a Russian billionaire who convinces her to finally divorce Len and whisks her off on a trip to Europe. Neither of them love each other, and Katya calls it off, though sticks to her plan to divorce Len. That’s when she finds out her mother is dying, and all the pieces of her life seem to unravel at once. 

Where I’m At:

Still sheltering-in-place. Again, this has made for a terribly boring section. There’s not much to affect my read when there’s not much going on in my life.

I do suppose my somewhat-recent-, sort-of-breakup made me sympathetic to Katya’s relationship with B. in the book. I don’t think you’re particularly supposed to cheer for them, they’re so obviously problematic and doomed. That’s not to say that I did cheer (they were obviously awful together), but I do understand what it is to stubbornly, and utterly love someone, in spite of the fact that you know it doesn’t work, it hasn’t worked, it won’t work. I liked that it didn’t have clear ending or resolution for Katya’s love life, that it was neither hopeful nor bleak, because that’s sort of how I feel now, too. 

Getting Into it:

I think what makes this book most compelling is the narration. Katya is charmingly unlikable, if that makes sense – she’s totally selfish but brutally honest and self-aware about it. She’s unflinching and unpretentious, with a clear voice and dry humor. It’s very black, and feels very Russian (I’m currently reading War and Peace so I am thus obviously an expert on what “feels Russian”). On paper, not much funny happens in the book – lost love, lost home, lost parents – but Katya manages to approach it with a shrug and touch of absurdism, drawing out laughter from even the tensest moments. This was most effective in the parts of the book that functioned like a rom-com, but less so in the bildungsroman aspects.  

That said, I was also deeply intrigued by the exploration of Katya’s relationship with her mother, Nina. Katya is in turn fiercely protective of her mother, jealous of her, adoring of her, confiding in her, and ignoring her. She goes to Nina first with any issue and desperately seeks her approval, choosing to avoid her when she doesn’t get it. In some ways, Nina remains an ambiguous character – in spite of her importance, the reader (like Katya) doesn’t actually know all that much about her. To me, it felt like an accurate parent-child relationship, and Nina’s sudden sickness and death felt like a deep, poignant tragedy. 

The flashcards and notes to the reader were a little cutesy and forced, but I still liked them. I found them effective at making Katya more relatable, as they sort of broke down the fourth wall and gave the reader direct insights. Some were playful, such as: 

Note to women going to see the love of their life for the last time. Why, why, why do we think that what we wear matters?

And others were painful:

Note to a reader about to scream at her mother that her symptoms are not real. Don’t do it! You will never be able to forgive yourself. You hear me? Never!

The main criticism I have of Divide Me by Zero is that outside of Katya, B., Nina, and Victor, most other characters in the book fell flat, particularly Len. The reader never really gets to see what Katya saw in him to start with – which could be intentional because she’s writing the book after their marriage has fallen apart, but it felt like a key detail to leave out of the story. I was particularly horrified when, during their break-up, he grabs her by the throat and nearly strangles her. It’s a scene that’s sort of skimmed over, and then Katya goes back to comforting him. That part did feel relatable in the way that some women (myself included) might handle abuse, but it was so unexpected with the few details the reader learned about Len. I also wanted more about their children, who didn’t seem to have any distinguishing character traits at all. 

There were other things – I wouldn’t call the book totally clean, by which I mean that sometimes the timing of the narrative bounced around in a way that was confusing and unclear, making it difficult to follow. If I were generous I’d say that could be a manifestation of Katya’s grief, as she’s sort of remembering her life in a haphazard way, but I’m more inclined to think that the author just wasn’t able to pull it off. Which is fair! Very few do it well. There were also more flat-ish characters that would sort of pop up now and again, but their appearances always ended up being more confusing than anything for me since I couldn’t remember anything about them, which took away from whatever that scene should have added to the story. 

Overall – still a good, entertaining book. I’d recommend it to fans of Russian literature, or maybe even Vonnegut (similar black/cynical/absurd kind of humor), who are looking for something more light to distract them in ~these times~.