"What do we do with this, hang ourselves?" In other words: the novel was designed for nothing to happen. "I'm afraid I'll accidentally eat it all before I get there," Selin says of chocolate, adding that she was "following the rule that you had to pretend to have this problem where you couldn't resist chocolate." The recipient was delighted.
Anfangs wird durchaus Lese-Interesse geweckt, sehr schnell wird man doch gelangweilt und überfliegt und überblättert Dutzende von Seiten bis zum banalen Ende. She aspires to be a writer and for her “language itself is a self sufficient system.” At Harvard, she befriends Svetlana, who is an extremely smart and opinionated girl and becomes Selin’s confidante over the first year of her college life.
- Stylist 'Batuman captures the … Life, more often than not, is just life. Please try againSorry, we failed to record your vote. Batuman has delivered a delightful, excruciatingly smart work of literary fiction that so perfectly captures the confusion of young love. I found myself underlining about a third of this novel because there is so much brilliance and eloquence. "You could get the meaning, or you could miss it completely." I hadn't learned anything at all." She makes friends with Svetlana, a Serbian classmate, and Ivan from Hungary with whom she sits in the Russian classes. For anyone who has ever felt "different," or a bit separated from a common reality, THE IDIOT is in your wheelhouse. In The Idiot, Batuman’s fictional counterpart, Selin, forms an epistolary romance with her classmate Ivan through the elaborate emails they send back and forth. Please try againSorry, we failed to record your vote. Selin comes from a privileged Turkish background and vaguely wants to be a writer (although when her first short story is published she finds no joy in it and even feels embarrassed.) It is a bildungsroman, and concerns a college freshman, Selin, attending Harvard University in the 1990s. It reminded me of Catcher in the Rye with a much more insightful, mature, compassionate narrator. This was a choice from my book club so it will be interesting to hear what the others thought of it.
I understand why they're saying that, but I'll have to disagree for this reason: the beauty of this book is in its craft, not its plot. To be fair, I am not from the East Coast and did not attend an Ivy League school, so if that is your background, perhaps it is funny in an insider kind of way. Another finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for fiction 2018 (also Women’s Prize for fiction etc. After viewing product detail pages, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in.After viewing product detail pages, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in. Places she was visiting was exciting places I would love to visit or lived in.
Elif Batuman has sung the praises of "long novels, pointless novels," and she puts her money where her mouth is with The Idiot, a tale …
This isn't a book with lots and twists and turns, it's a novel of the mind, an 18-year-old Harvard student. The first part of the book is really good, but I felt the second part could have been shorter. We had high expectations because of the positive reviews it received and because it was shortlisted for the Pulitzer, because it definitely did not strike a chord with any of us. Welcome back.
This was bought as a present.
The Idiot - Elif Batuman Selin is a freshman student of languages at Harvard. Oh yes: Selin (who also speaks Turkish) learns Russian, and the book's title is of course a nod to Part of my warm feelings to this book must be because the author is reflecting so much of my own experience, that era (95-96) of life-changing technology and the normalization of the internet right at the gateway to college, with suddenly changing relationships and interactions, especially how email changed flirtations!
I am a teacher at an international school, and we chose this for our book club. First of all only reason I wanted to read was author is a daughter of Turkish parents.
My Year of Rest and Relaxation. Ivan, she knows, is the "love interest." Well, kind of. The Idiot Batuman Elif. Like “Lighting a match felt exciting and a little bit dangerous, and when the flame came into contact with the paper, it made a sound like the needle coming down on a record player—like the music was about to start.” ― Elif Batuman, The Idiot. Which might be an alright response if you're Selin.