The three steps to reading The Idiot by Elif Batuman: one, find out that it had been nominated for the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2018 and become mildly interested. Two, find out that the author is a New Yorker staff writer and become rather interested. Three, have your friend make a joke about the title in the charity shop, excitedly pick it up and be completely satisfied.
What is The Idiot? It is the story of Selin, an American-born Turkish girl of 18 who is starting out as a freshman at Harvard just as email is becoming a thing and mobile phones are nowhere to be found as of yet. It is not coming-of-age and it is at the same time; the blurb says it's about Selin facing the challenges of adulthood, but I completely disagree (and feel that whoever wrote the blurb wasn't really trying at all or hasn't read the book). It's more about observation and coming to terms, then seeing if there are other ways of doing things; from making friends to falling in love to learning languages. Language, in fact, is probably the dominating theme - do we think differently in different languages? Does language limit our interpersonal connections? All this through a charming and hilarious point of view.
What did I like about it?
Despite its shiny credentials, of course I was skeptical when starting out. What could this book possibly present about being 18 that I haven't read about or experienced? Nothing, it turns out, but in a way that makes it feel completely fresh and new. The strength of the book, and its complete uniqueness, lies in the defamiliarised, humorous point of view of the first-person narrator. With the entire book consisting of short, snappy sections, usually the longest ones running over three pages, it feels almost as if every short section ends in a snappy punchline by Selin, keeping the tone light and entertaining the whole way through. "Having hit Send, I walked to the snow-covered river, sat on a bench, and ate cashews. The sky looked like a load of glowing grayish laundry that someone had washed with a red shirt." End section.
By not taking itself too seriously, it manages to convince us readers that the topic is, in fact, to be taken seriously indeed. You wouldn't expect to believe the things an 18-year old might say, but you believe Selin. Although the book's most significant aspect is a platonic love between her and a Hungarian senior named Ivan, it also manages to explore friendship, travel, developing a personality and more philosophical questions about the self in depth.
A strong accompanying theme in the book is language and its limitations. While at university, Selin's courses mostly revolve around different mediums: linguistics, art, film, Russian - and how expressive these channels are. Her relationship with Ivan is based on the fictional quality of emails; Ivan would rather limit their communications purely to email, even avoiding saying hello to keep within the frameworks of written communications. For a while, anyway.
It also has to be noted that, being Hungarian, I appreciated an American writer taking the time to explore Hungarian language, personalities and even geography (the last quarter of the book, in fact, takes place in Hungary). The unfamiliar pair of eyes on my country actually made it look quite nice, I think. And regarding Hungarians, she was spot on:
"Rózsa snorted. 'Of course you don't like Tünde. Who likes Tünde? ... Tünde is not interesting! What about me? What do you think about me?" Typical.
What was I not massively fond of?
Speaking of the limitations of language, it has to be said that an excellent writing style can only take you so far, and perhaps at times I felt like the plot moved a little slow. Especially towards the end, maybe I would have cut out a few pages to make the book slightly shorter. It's not that I was weary of the language, but I sometimes felt impatient to find out certain plot points, and would have rather moved on than lingered. But this goes to show that rather than telling your stereotypical story, Batuman relishes the opportunity of playing around with language:
"'You don't feel food,' Owen said, 'you taste it.'
'Yes,' Béla said. 'But I also mean more than to taste it.'
'You enjoy it,' suggested Daniel. 'If you eat slowly, you enjoy the food.'
'You enjoy,' repeated Béla.
'You relish it,' said Owen. 'You savor it.'
'Savior?'
'Not savior - savor. It's like enjoying something, but more slowly.'
'I don't know this word,' Béla said, his eyes shining."
Also, for the most part, Ivan was a complete a-hole.
Overall...
Once I finished The Idiot, I also found out that it was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in fiction, so if you needed more convincing that this is a kind, humorous exploration of being a person and that it's extremely good, surely now you don't need any more.
In fact, for a feel of the book, just head to Elif's website; her writing style comes across straight away.
My best advice is to try not to focus on the story too much, and just enjoy Batuman's excellent writing, and a character full of... character?...
Have I run out of language?...
8/10
