The son of a Russian immigrant, protagonist Leonard (Lenny) Abramov, a middle-aged, middle class, otherwise unremarkable man whose mentality is still in the past century, falls madly in love with Eunice Park, a young Korean-American from New Jersey struggling with materialism and the pressures of her traditional Korean family.

In the meantime, the totalitarian Bipartisan Party government's main mission is to encourage and promote consumerism while eliminating political dissidents,[2] under US President Cortez.

It was named one of the best books of the year by numerous publications, including The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, O: The Oprah Magazine, Maureen Corrigan of NPR, and Slate.

[12] In a more recent article in Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses, Martín Urdiales-Shaw has approached this novel as foregrounding various interrelated "modes of waste", operating across sociopolitical, cultural, ethical and biological paradigms.

[13] In 2015 Ben Stiller and Media Rights Capital announced plans for a TV series for Showtime based on Super Sad True Love Story but no further developments had occurred as of November 2021.