The Idiot

Starred review from January 2, 2017
The mysterious relationship between language and the world” is just one of the questions troubling Selin Karada˘g, the 18-year-old protagonist of Batuman’s (The Possessed) wonderful first novel, a bildungsroman Selin narrates with fluent wit and inexorable intelligence. Beginning her first year at Harvard in the fall of 1995, Selin is determined to “be a courageous person, uncowed by other people’s dumb opinions”; she already thinks of herself as a writer, although “this conviction was completely independent of having ever written anything.” In a Russian class, the Turkish-American Selin is befriended by the worldlier Svetlana, whose Serbian family has endowed her with capital and complexes, and the older Hungarian math major Ivan, who becomes Selin’s correspondent in an exciting new medium: email. Their late-night exchanges inspire Selin more than anything else in her life, but they frustrate her, too: Ivan’s intentions toward her are vague, perhaps even to himself. Traveling to Paris with Svetlana in the summer of 1996, Selin plans to continue on to Hungary, where she will teach English in a village school, and then to Turkey, where her extended family resides. Thus Batuman updates the grand tour travelogue just as she does the epistolary novel and the novel of ideas, in prose as deceptively light as it is ambitious. One character wonders whether it’s possible “to be sincere without sounding pretentious,” and this long-awaited and engrossing novel delivers a resounding yes.

The author of this book narrates as 18-year-old Turkish-American Selin begins her first year at Harvard. It's 1995, and Selin strives to be an ethical person who thinks independently, unaffected by others' opinions. A likable young woman who is coping with frustrations and confused emotions, Selin meets several original characters, including Serbian Svetlana, Hungarian Ivan, and American Ralph, who is obsessed with the Kennedy family. The audiobook would have been better served by a more professional narration, as the author's isn't as colorful as her novel. There are long passages in which nothing happens, yet the novel is filled with affecting vignettes and strange conversations. As Selin understands her limitations and awakens to her possibilities, Batuman's observations are dark, satiric, and very funny. S.J.H. � AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

August 1, 2017

Batuman makes her fiction debut already a literary darling: a New Yorker staff writer since 2010 and the author of a much-adored essay collection, The Possessed, about the pleasurable intricacies of reading Russian literature. The year is 1995, and Turkish American 18-year-old Selin enters Harvard. She takes classes and makes friends, but her most important connection develops via email--new and enigmatic back then--with Ivan, an older student she rarely sees although she pines for his virtual missives. With freshman year over, she stops through France on her way to Hungary--because Ivan is there--where she'll be teaching English in a small village. Back at Harvard in the fall, she realizes, "I hadn't learned anything at all." In 2006, her "Short Story & Novel" contribution to highbrow literary journal n+1 included the line: "Write long novels, pointless novels." The Idiot is just that. As if to add further emphasis, Batuman plods through almost 14 hours of narration. With a novel so thoroughly hyped, listed, and award-predicted, perhaps disappointment is inevitable. VERDICT Despite Batuman's obvious erudition, crafting gorgeous phrases and being fluent in both philosophy and philology aren't enough to redeem this Idiot. ["Highly detailed and determinedly linear": LJ 12/16 review of the Penguin Pr. hc.]--Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon, Washington, DC

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