What a terrible terrible almost-two years this has been, and kudos to Gary Shteyngart for trying to make sense of it in a novel about pandemic-avoidance (or almost avoidance) and friendship. Writer Sasha Senderofsky’s closest friends and rivals join him, his wife Masha, and their adopted daughter Nat in an escape to the country that turns into a months-long test of their relationships. Shteyngart’s novel of creative types confronting illness, mortality, betrayal, and love can’t even be called satire this time, except for possibly when it comes to social media and our obsession with apps, tweets, clicks, and alerts. The carefully ordered lives of these desperate people have been turned upside down and, for better or for worse, they turn to one another to try to make things right. ‘Our Country Friends’ is a very moving work about how we’re living now; best of all, Donald Trump hardly makes an appearance. And now I’m going to read some Chekhov.