The Idiot by Elif Bautman

​Having previously read and enjoyed "The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them" by Elif Batuman, I was eager to read the author's newest effort, "The Idiot". Like its predecessor, this book is also titled after a work of Dostoevsky. Batuman is, like the main character Selin, a Turkish-American Harvard grad, and the authority with which she writes of ivy-league life and the various cultures playing a role in "The Idiot" make the thinly-disguised autobiographical tone of this novel even more apparent than they would be already. The narrative consists mainly of detailing some of the confusions Selin encounters --- confusions that naturally accompany youth, going off to college for the first time, friendships that one does not feel sufficiently cool to be worthy of, doubt-inducing first love, the self- and culturally-reflective lens of international travel, and the broadening out of one's experiences in general. We follow Selin as she attempts to understand and find meaning in the feelings and experiences she has during her freshman year at Harvard and in the summer thereafter.

While I enjoyed "The Idiot" well enough, I did not find it as good a read as "The Possessed". For me, "The Idiot"'s narrative was not only fragmented, but also mind-jarringly intricate in some places and insufficiently detailed to follow in others. I also found the tone of the book very "flip", like it was trying way too hard and self-consciously to be cool. Perhaps this was intentional --- certainly one's internal dialogue can be like that as one's life is being lived --- but I found it tedious in a 430+ page novel. I also found the book's ending sort of non-existent, and therefore disappointing. But perhaps that was intentional, too, reflecting the way that the transition from one chapter of one's life to another can be both undramatic and underwhelming enough to make it hard to identify in real-time. Finally, I thought there was a lot of unrealized potential to explore the role of language in Selin's (narrated and imagined future) personal and professional lives. The official blurb for the book says it's about Selin's 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". But while the former aspect of Selin's confusion was developed to the point of tedium, the latter was, in my reading, touched on only obliquely. Perhaps that's why this flip romp through many deep and interesting aspects of coming of age felt so directionless and fell so flat for me.

-Patricia Johann

Release Date: March 14, 2017