Elif Batuman

"An addictive, sprawling epic; I wolfed it down." --Miranda July, author of The First Bad Man and It Chooses You "Easily the funniest book I've read this year." --GQ A portrait of the artist as a young woman. A novel about not just discovering but inventing oneself. The year is 1995, and email is new. Selin, the daughter of Turkish immigrants, arrives for her freshman year at Harvard. She signs up for classes in subjects she has never heard of, befriends her charismatic and worldly Serbian classmate, Svetlana, and, almost by accident, begins corresponding with Ivan, an older mathematics student from Hungary. Selin may have barely spoken to Ivan, but with each email they exchange, the act of writing seems to take on new and increasingly mysterious meanings. At the end of the school year, Ivan goes to Budapest for the summer, and Selin heads to the Hungarian countryside, to teach English in a program run by one of Ivan's friends. On the way, she spends two weeks visiting Paris with Svetlana. Selin's summer in Europe does not resonate with anything she has previously heard about the typical experiences of American college students, or indeed of any other kinds of people. For Selin, this is a journey further inside herself: a coming to grips with the ineffable and exhilarating confusion of first love, and with the growing consciousness that she is doomed to become a writer. With superlative emotional and intellectual sensitivity, mordant wit, and pitch-perfect style, Batuman dramatizes the uncertainty of life on the cusp of adulthood. Her prose is a rare and inimitable combination of tenderness and wisdom; its logic as natural and inscrutable as that of memory itself. The Idiot is a heroic yet self-effacing reckoning with the terror and joy of becoming a person in a world that is as intoxicating as it is disquieting. Batuman's fiction is unguarded against both life's affronts and its beauty--and has at its command the complete range of thinking and feeling which they entail.

The Idiot

The year is 1995, and email is new. Selin, the daughter of Turkish immigrants, arrives for her freshman year at Harvard where she signs up for classes in subjects she has never heard of, befriends her charismatic Serbian classmate, Svetlana, and, almost by accident, begins corresponding with Ivan, an older mathematics student. Selin may have barely spoken to Ivan, but with each email they exchange, the act of writing seems to take on new and increasingly mysterious meanings. When the school year ends, Ivan goes to Budapest and Selin heads to the Hungarian countryside. Her summer does not resonate with anything she has previously heard about the typical experiences of college students, but rather is the beginning of a journey further inside herself: a coming to grips with the ineffable and exhilarating confusion of first love, and with the growing consciousness that she is doomed to become a writer.

 wen

Most people, the minute they meet you, were sizing you up for some competition for resources. It was as if everyone lived in fear of a shipwreck, where only so many people would fit on the lifeboat, and they were constantly trying to stake out their property and identify dispensable people – people they could get rid of.... Everyone is trying to reassure themselves: I’m not going to get kicked off the boat, they are. They’re always separating people into two groups, allies and dispensable people... The number of people who want to understand what you’re like instead of trying to figure out whether you get to stay on the boat - it’s really limited.

Fredo Moreno

In high school I had been full of opinions, but high school had been like prison, with constant opposition and obstacles. Once the obstacles were gone, meaning seemed to vanish, too.

Dora Tominic

I had chosen a ten-point font, both to conserve paper and to discourage people from reading the story, which I didn't think they would enjoy. Even though I had a deep conviction that I was good at writing, and that in some way I already was a writer, this conviction was completely independent of my having ever written anything, or being able to imagine ever writing anything, that I thought anyone would like to read.

Syrina Akbari

“As long as there are beginning English students and a lake and I can see a mountain, I will be perfectly happy,” she said, reminding me of how my grandfather used to say he was a simple man with simple tastes: “ all I need is a little milk from a goat that has been fed for a month on wild green pears.”

Magdalena

How were you supposed to talk anout people?

It wasn't that I was a child exactly, but I didn't really have a history as anything else. 

Connie Meade

Helen 

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2018Selin, a tall, highly strung Turkish-American from New Jersey turns up at Harvard and finds herself dangerously overwhelmed by the challenges and possibilities of adulthood. She studies linguistics and literature, and spends a lot of time thinking about what language - and languages - can and cannot do. Along the way she befriends Svetlana, a cosmopolitan Serb, and obsesses over Ivan, a mathematician from Hungary. Selin ponders profound questions about how culture and language shape who we are, how difficult it is to be a failed writer, and how baffling love is. At once clever and clueless, Batuman?s heroine shows us with perfect hilarity and soulful inquisitiveness just how messy it can be to forge a self.

Riley

amari

Maria

overall, yes, nothing much happens in this book, which i notice is the main critique against it. it is a very internally-focused novel, centered around selin's thoughts and attempts to make sense of the world around her, on who she is & those around her. selin's narrative voice is very unique and insightful, i loved the interplay between language and life. i think, overall, batuman does a very good job of describing the awkward transition into adulthood, with all its confusion. that being said, i don't think it's a novel that you would just devour, so if you're looking for a fast-paced, plot-driven coming of age story this isn't it, but i am very glad i took my sweet time with it. i will be checking out either/or!

Rosa

I read this back in December. At the time, the first half of the book resonated so heavily with me that I expected the second half too as well, and when it didn't, I was disappointed. Coming back to it, I wanted to give it more of a chance than I did the first time.

I still enjoy Either/Or better than The Idiot. The first half of this book is still better to me than the second. But Selin no longer seems like a total pushover to me like how she did the first time I read it. I'm more sympathetic to her now -- something I probably should have been in the first place, considering how similar to her I feel. I still don't find the novel funny as a defining characteristic, but there are funny pieces. Batuman has the ability to write passages that are both factual and feel like they should be metaphorically applicable to any number of situations, in the world and in my case, in my personal life. Bumped up a little on the rating.

I don't understand why this was labeled funny. I found it rather unnerving -- the first third or so was a bit too close to my current life to feel comfortable. But even if that wasn't the case, this isn't a funny book. Selin, who I originally semi-related to, became a total doormat within the first half of the book. It was sad to watch her in all of these relationships with other people, almost never able to assert herself. But in any case, it was engaging. It might be my motivation to go to Istanbul for fall break next year.

one of the funniest books of all time about linguistics and first love and being 18 and murphy’s fucking law, let me tell you. selin is an autist also. non-negotiable.

lauren amitirigala

Isabella 

loved it especially the writing but it was too long

Great read that show cases the past quite well and how complex yet simple life is everywhere you go. 

Naveen Sheik

D D D 

Started off slow but then I was reading 100pages/day. I really enjoyed this book. It felt impossible to put down towards the end. I think I was hoping to find some answer to a question I've had for a while. 

I've said enough about this in my updates, but I felt so moved by this depiction of a very particular type of crush. Where it's all about power. When you really have nothing to say but you're overcome with desire. Where you're suffering so much for ****SOME REASON****. Where you're not having conversations at all, you're doing something better . Ivan was exactly the type of guy I had this crush on: intelligent, pretentious, aloof, confused, had a girlfriend. Felt very true to being 19.

“it can be really exasperating to look back at your past. what’s the matter with you? i want to ask her, my younger self, shaking her shoulder. if i did that, she would probably cry. maybe i would cry, too.”

Enjoyed it because I lived it.. I could see how those who didn't wouldn't. 
4 stars from me :)

maryam

I really enjoyed this book. It had such a witty way of describing the most mundane things and funny way of viewing the silly woes of love/ infatuation. I think it really describes a coming-of-age story and accurately dipicts the emotional turmoil/ internal soliloquies that a girlie goes through in college (but that's just my opinion).

Ashley Denktas

Ryan 

gabby jusoy

one of the books that have to come into your life and be read at the right time

syadrina

the most important plot is selin's insufferable personality

lexie

"At a table near the door, two students were slumped over their books, either asleep or murdered." THE SCREAM I LET OUT

found it hard to put the book down because it's both hilarious and fascinating. i'll never know what being an exchange student in harvard feels like but this comes pretty close.

the lack of chapters (only season changes and part breaks some hundred pages apart) make reading breathers impossible!

y✦

"At a table near the door, two students were slumped over their books, either asleep or murdered." THE SCREAM I LET OUT

found it hard to put the book down because it's both hilarious and fascinating. i'll never know what being an exchange student in harvard feels like but this comes pretty close.

the lack of chapters (only season changes and part breaks some hundred pages apart) make reading breathers impossible!

The best part of this book should not have been ‘The Story of Nina’ but low and behold that’s the truth.

Caroline

I started reading this in the before times and the library has marked it lost. I am unsure if this means I hated it or loved. I think I feel deeply neutral but enjoyed the unrequited obsession as the love interest was clearly a dickhead. He does inadvertently introduce lots of colour to the book though which made it feel different to most books I have read.

I did enjoy how it made me feel like I was skimming a text for deeper thought like I was at uni again, a nice parallel to the subject matter. I suspect I will enjoy rereading this book when it is not read over six months.

Ennzo O.

This is a really down to earth book about a girl who is trying to find herself. Being a freshman in a prestigious university, she struggles to find meaning in all the sophisticated concepts and courses she takes. The humor is subtle, Selin is a very interesting character, and the story overall is very relatable for those who may havr gone through similar experiences in their early adult years. Give it a try!

Ivan is the apex master manipulator intellectual emotionally unavailable man

Ruby Emmeline Fisher

Udit Desai

 despite its popularity with many of my mutuals simply because of its title. i honestly believed it to be eyebrow-raising at best, and a lofty choice to make at worst - naming your novel after a classic dostoevsky work! - and after finishing the novel, i have mixed feelings. though the various russian references scattered throughout the story are clear, they don’t serve (or at least, i don’t feel that they do) enough of a purpose to make a significant contribution to the plot beyond selin’s russian class, where she meets ivan and svetlana. 

 (at least to me) is that it fails to achieve the things it tries to simply because it has too many goals. i remember this brandon taylor newsletter where he expands the definition of “campus novel” to include any homogenous setting with major protagonist self-development (a very oversimplified condensation of what taylor actually says). in that vein, 

 by andrew sean greer is somewhat a campus novel despite the settings constantly shifting, since we see self-realization catalyzed by multiple homogenous settings. there’s also the stereotypical campus novel, of course, which takes place at, well, a campus, something like 

 (minus, of course, the more satirical aspects).

 tries too hard to be both: the bildungsroman, and the not-quite-travel-sized campus novel. we have part one which centers around selin’s unexpectedly nonmonotonous life at harvard, and part two about her travels in hungary, with very little to link the two together except for selin’s love interest, ivan, and her uninteresting friend svetlana. part one is very well done - though little actually happens, i’m invested in her email exchanges - dazzling lines like “but insignificant subtleties are the only difference between something special, and a huge pile of garbage floating through space” - and, more importantly, the slice-of-life mood that batuman manages to capture so well. it’s funny and charming: selin’s crush, her quirky caricature-esque peers. and yet, i can’t bring myself to like ivan, not in part one nor part two - it becomes apparent very quickly that he exists in the novel as a tool for selin’s self-growth, which would be entirely excusable if selin exhibited any meaningful self-growth in, like, the 100,000+ words. it’s meandering, and especially so in hungary, when absolutely nothing happens, and selin and ivan are just as far apart in hungary as they were at harvard. i’ve 

 selin and had my ivan: i know you’re not supposed to like him. but when batuman doesn’t let selin really grow from the experiences she has with him, doesn’t let her respect herself, it feels almost wasted. 

it’s not a bad book, it’s really not. i’m not giving enough credit. 

 made me laugh out loud more than once, and batuman’s prose is 

 - witty, beautiful at times, and exceedingly well-balanced between the two. batuman has a gift for seamlessly altering between gorgeous, meaningful prose and genuine humor without making transitions shallow. but the novel as a whole isn’t something i would recommend to others. there were parts where i was dead bored - the hungary arc especially: the overdetailing in language and the environment that added to the value and interpretation of the story for maybe the first ten pages, not in the one-hundred that follow - and in the end, good prose and humor can’t overcome shallow characterizations and lack of development. 

for a long time, i was afraid to read the idiot despite its popularity with many of my mutuals simply because of its title. i honestly believed it to be eyebrow-raising at best, and a lofty choice to make at worst - naming your novel after a classic dostoevsky work! - and after finishing the novel, i have mixed feelings. though the various russian references scattered throughout the story are clear, they don’t serve (or at least, i don’t feel that they do) enough of a purpose to make a significant contribution to the plot beyond selin’s russian class, where she meets ivan and svetlana. 

i think the main flaw in the idiot (at least to me) is that it fails to achieve the things it tries to simply because it has too many goals. i remember this brandon taylor newsletter where he expands the definition of “campus novel” to include any homogenous setting with major protagonist self-development (a very oversimplified condensation of what taylor actually says). in that vein, less by andrew sean greer is somewhat a campus novel despite the settings constantly shifting, since we see self-realization catalyzed by multiple homogenous settings. there’s also the stereotypical campus novel, of course, which takes place at, well, a campus, something like the secret history (minus, of course, the more satirical aspects).

the shortcoming, then, is that the idiot tries too hard to be both: the bildungsroman, and the not-quite-travel-sized campus novel. we have part one which centers around selin’s unexpectedly nonmonotonous life at harvard, and part two about her travels in hungary, with very little to link the two together except for selin’s love interest, ivan, and her uninteresting friend svetlana. part one is very well done - though little actually happens, i’m invested in her email exchanges - dazzling lines like “but insignificant subtleties are the only difference between something special, and a huge pile of garbage floating through space” - and, more importantly, the slice-of-life mood that batuman manages to capture so well. it’s funny and charming: selin’s crush, her quirky caricature-esque peers. and yet, i can’t bring myself to like ivan, not in part one nor part two - it becomes apparent very quickly that he exists in the novel as a tool for selin’s self-growth, which would be entirely excusable if selin exhibited any meaningful self-growth in, like, the 100,000+ words. it’s meandering, and especially so in hungary, when absolutely nothing happens, and selin and ivan are just as far apart in hungary as they were at harvard. i’ve been selin and had my ivan: i know you’re not supposed to like him. but when batuman doesn’t let selin really grow from the experiences she has with him, doesn’t let her respect herself, it feels almost wasted. 


it’s not a bad book, it’s really not. i’m not giving enough credit. the idiot made me laugh out loud more than once, and batuman’s prose is brilliant - witty, beautiful at times, and exceedingly well-balanced between the two. batuman has a gift for seamlessly altering between gorgeous, meaningful prose and genuine humor without making transitions shallow. but the novel as a whole isn’t something i would recommend to others. there were parts where i was dead bored - the hungary arc especially: the overdetailing in language and the environment that added to the value and interpretation of the story for maybe the first ten pages, not in the one-hundred that follow - and in the end, good prose and humor can’t overcome shallow characterizations and lack of development. 

The Idiot

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