Sunday, June 11, 2017

" The Idiot" by Elif Batuman

If you don't want to read a novel where chaste Harvard undergrads with ties to foreign countries fall in love while they talk in detail about higher math concepts and agglutinate suffixes, then don't read this book. There is no binge drinking, scavenger hunts or  fountain jumping. Sexual tension is found in the lapping of waves against a canoe on the Danube.

If you want to read a book whose form functions as part of the narrative - like Joyce's "Portrait of the  Artist as a Young Man" - then perhaps you would like this book. It is almost a journal about a linguist major who tries to find the meaning of language and how to apply her education to one of the most fundamental of human experiences: becoming an adult. Expect twisty curves to  both nowhere and somewhere ahead.


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