A review by moominlove
The Idiot by Elif Batuman

4.0

I really liked this! Selin is funny and witty and horribly insecure and unsure of what her role is in the world, or what her role is in the story she believes her life to be. And to be clear, she is doing nothing to actually write this story of her own she's just letting life happen to her and just assuming this is her story or her fate. Which is really funny and sad at times. She's a really smart dumb 19 year old. Her relationship with Ivan was boring yes but it was realistic in the sense that this poor girl fell for a weird older dude who led her on and nothing comes of it but heartbreak and tons of time devoted to overthinking the tiniest of things. Selin is a really funny character with an interesting perspective of the world, yet she wasn't even the most interesting character in the book imo. I just loved Svetlana. I read some negative reviews of this book and I guess I kinda agree - nothing really happens and the conversations are weird and boring. But weirdly enough I didn't really need a plot for this book. I was perfectly happy living in Selin's world for a couple months. I'm excited to read the sequel, hopefully she didn't really give up linguistics.