Book Review: The Idiot by Elif Batuman

 

The Idiot

by Elif Batuman

4⭐

As someone who was for a long time mesmerized by the idea of American college life and had these romanticized ideas of places like Harvard, I was immediately drawn in. But the first hundred pages felt like a systematic disenchantment of that and I struggled to find the appeal for a while. A lot of obscure references and pedantry come up in the text which gave off a mild sense of inaccessibility.

I have to laud the author for capturing that feeling of disconnection and anxiety in a young adult in a liminal phase like joining college. It felt very similar to my experience when I joined med school where meeting all these smart and talented people makes you question yourself. The idea of finding everybody else being self-assured and knowing what they are doing while you are still feeling like a fish trying to run was very well embodied by Selin. The author is very convincing about it in the way she makes us want to tell the protagonist to do something while agreeing with her that the other characters are being more 'active'. I constantly felt like the author was showing us things in her life in a biased light (although self imposed). It so acutely captures that adolescent self doubting.

I have to admit I was sometimes challenged by the dialogue around linguistics and what Selin was trying to achieve in her quest to learn these languages. But the ending was abrupt in her realisation that her reticence in communication had nothing to do with language. The book is filled with dry and witty humor like this that I really enjoyed. Her infatuation with Ivan was something that I really appreciated only after the book ended. At first I was confused about what she saw in him to be so enthralled. Then I appreciated how subtly the author had portrayed how he was leading her on and I was angry for her. By the end I accepted how they were essentially each acting their ages with all the angst and ambivalence.

There are reviews that argue if it is a bildungsroman or the opposite with the way it ends. But I think it is a tale of learning and she manages to learn something about people, and relationships, and what she wants to write. But I was definitely disappointed by the ending. In its own quirky way the book had made a seemingly dull person feel like a friend you're invested in and I would have loved to know how she ended up growing per se.