My five star rating is the average of six stars for sheer inventiveness of a world and exuberance of language. And four stars for the ability to sustain it over the course of a novel.

Super Sad True Love Story is set about 50 years in the future. The world is a super extreme version of aspects of ours. American has been reduced to three industries (Credit -- where men aspire to work, Retail -- where women aspire to work, and Media -- which is largely individuals live streaming their lives). Everyone carries around an iPhone-like device and spends most of their time social networking, ranking each other, shopping on line, etc. Occasionally they take a break from this to "verbal" with a friend. America lurches from financial crisis to financial crisis as corporations, foreign governments, and sovereign wealth funds all swoop in to take over. And the super-rich are becoming "post-humans" thanks to life extending treatments that promise immortality.

Set against this backdrop, the novel tells a love story in chapters that alternate between Lenny Abramov, a schlubby Jewish intellectual aspiring to immortality, and emails and chats from his much younger Korean girlfriend, Eunice Park. Both narrators are somewhat unreliable and the story moves along reasonably well, as the world around them disintegrates and a predictable triangle in their relationship appears.

The writing is hilarious and amazingly inventive, but has diminishing returns -- although never turning negative. And the plot is a decent enough scaffolding and keeps you interested from beginning to end. Overall, one of the best books of the year.