The Idiot by Elif Batuman

The year is 1995, and email is new. Selin, the daughter of Turkish immigrants, arrives for her freshman year at Harvard. She signs up for classes in subjects she has never heard of, befriends her charismatic and worldly Serbian classmate, Svetlana, and, almost by accident, begins corresponding with Ivan, an older mathematics student from Hungary. Selin may have barely spoken to Ivan, but with each email they exchange, the act of writing seems to take on new and increasingly mysterious meanings. 

At the end of the school year, Ivan goes to Budapest for the summer, and Selin heads to the Hungarian countryside, to teach English in a program run by one of Ivan’s friends. On the way, she spends two weeks visiting Paris with Svetlana. Selin’s summer in Europe does not resonate with anything she has previously heard about the typical experiences of American college students, or indeed of any other kinds of people. For Selin, this is a journey further inside herself: a 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. 

This year we are starting off with a challenge. Elif Batuman’s The Idiot is not an easy read. The language is dense, the plot meanders, and the main character is a bit distant. But the journey to connect with this book is the journey the main character is living. The key, I think, to this novel is to understand that the idea of connection and disconnect with language is the point. Don’t feel bad if this book frustrates you, because Selin is just as frustrated as you are. 

Okay, so I may have done a terrible job selling you on this book. And If I’m being honest, it was a slow read for me. But I used that as an opportunity. Selin herself mentions that she can sometimes stare at a single word or sentence or page for a long time, trying to understand what she’s reading. I let that give me permission to do the same. 

That’s not to say that this book isn’t fun. There are surreptitious jokes and humor woven through the novel. And as vocal as Selin seems to be about not understanding language, her voice as a narrator is incredibly sharp and incisive. The book is about confusion and ambiguity, but there’s a clarity to how self-aware Selin is about the limits of her perception. This is a book that may not move quickly, but it also doesn’t waste words. Starting the year with something that almost pushes back against the reader may seem mean, but I think Batuman’s prose makes it worth reading. 

Review by Adam

On Earth, We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

The likelihood of finding a full-length novel with overtones of poetry, melody, and lyricism in its writing is slim at best, as such verse is difficult to maintain for more than a couple of stanzas or choruses. And yet, I hold in my hands a beautiful example of a book that reads like serenity and sounds like music — On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong. The book is penned as a letter to the protagonist’s mother, and Vuong has openly admitted that the work is more than semi-autobiographical. Vuong’s mother is an immigrant and is illiterate in English, and yet her son is writing to her in a language she cannot read. This sort of anonymity between writer and recipient allows for an intimate perspective into our protagonist’s inner thoughts and feelings. When writing something that will undoubtedly be understood by the person to whom it’s being written, one must select their words carefully to not offend or leave room for misinterpretation. Without these parameters, Vuong writes a deliciously personal and intuitive story of being the son of an immigrant single mother, life as a new American, assimilation and rejection, and the experience of being a gay man in a world that already rejects him enough for his differences.