Unfortunately, I didn't love it. (I kept thinking of Confederacy of Dunces, actually, while reading this, largely because of some echo in the tone). OH MY GOOD LORD THIS WAS ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE. Selin seizes the chance to go to Ivan’s native country in summer with a programme to teach English in remote villages. I liked it a lot

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. Your recently viewed items and featured recommendations This was an interesting novel, dense, unique, written from a very specific point of view. The first part of the book is really good, but I felt the second part could have been shorter. Which might be an alright response if you're Selin.

In other words: the novel was designed for nothing to happen. (I kept thinking of Confederacy of Dunces, actually, while reading this, largely because of some echo in the tone). "I was surrounded," Selin says, "overwhelmed, by things of unknown or dubious meaning, things that weren't commensurate to me in any way." While reading, I kept feeling like I had read versions of this before -- a rambling story about a cerebral main character who as a young person confronts a bewildering world of eccentric characters and odd situations without ever quite mastering them, instead always (mis)reading the world like a puzzling text - but, typically, such novels have a male protagonist. Conversations with Friends: A Novel DNF at around 70 % of the audiobook - I rarely DNF books, but I am so bored right now that I am starting to get aggressive, and we don't want that, do we? etc.) I was transported back into the feelings I hadn't felt in 20 years and recognizing they kinds of personalities I haven't seen in 20 years.

File: EPUB, 1019 KB . Most 18- and 19-year-olds have far more ability to enjoy life than these very lucky, privileged, and unbelievably irritating characters do. Funny, poignant and brilliantly written, you don't have to be 20 to remember how confusing life was back then. At over four hundred pages of what read like a rambling stream of consciousness, I never felt invested in the story or connected with any of the characters. Post a Review You … Penguin Press.

They didn't know. The Idiot Batuman Elif. She is a good writer: the first pages are enchanting.

It is literature and linguistics that capture her attention first. The Idiot - Elif Batuman Selin is a freshman student of languages at Harvard. Reading ... many of the people in the book remain flat, while inanimate objects take on golden, gorgeous warmth.Objects are comprehensible — they don't talk back. This is a novel in which nothing truly happens: nothing good, nothing bad, and nothing exciting.

As someone who went to college in the 90s, not far from where much of this novel takes place, I felt an unexpected amount of nostalgia for that first year of college where you know nothing but think you know everything and are surrounded by people wThis was an interesting novel, dense, unique, written from a very specific point of view. The first 300 or so pages would merit a solid 4 star rating (at least) in my opinion, its just the ending that I real can't get behind.

I went to college at this exact same time in Boston (at a much smaller, non-ivy league school) and shared many of Selin’s experiences of starting to use email for the first time and riding on the T or the MBTA subway around the city. I have taught high school for a number of years to students from both extremely privileged backgrounds and the working class, so I am definitely sympathetic to the idea that young people go through a period of trying to find themselves and feeling adrift.