Elif Batuman's first novel, The IDIOT was a finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize. Our engaging heroine is a Harvard freshman in 1995 whose coming of age tale coincides the dawning of email. Both are in their nascent phase while Selin considers what she wants to do with her life. She's intrigued by a new method of communicating via email. Selin like many other college freshmen, is reliant on oneself for the first time. She's very observant and perceptive of her peers, professors and the world opening up to her. Her take on people and situations are insightful and oftentimes, hilarious. Moreover, her ability to adapt enables her to experience life with an openness that is endearing and ennobling. Selin is the daughter of Turkish immigrants. She has a proclivity for studying foreign languages and linguistics. She takes advanced classes she's unfamiliar with, befriends a sophisticated, Serbian classmate and becomes enamored of a senior, Ivan, from Hungary. Selin pursues a relation ship with Ivan through the usage of emails. Their cryptic messaging to each other increasingly becomes more intense and obtuse. The subtext of a plot is a paper chase of studying, sleeping, socializing and negotiating the adjustments of workloads and loafing. At the end of Selin's freshman year she submits to Ivan's suggestion she teach English in Hungary over the summer, alluding to the likelihood they would be able to spend time together. The events are subterfuge to preponderance of acerbic banter and enigmatic conversations that filter through Selin's keen mind. Selin's resilience and sensitivity make her a beguiling and compelling figure. She's a vibrant young woman able to fend for herself admirably in precarious situations at home and abroad. Ivan is Selin's Achille's heel for which we wish to shield her vulnerability. Selin and Ivan discuss their attraction as being built upon their written conversations which was disconnected from truth and doesn't translate face to face. Why is it so hard to hold a conversation, Ivan asks of Selin. "We took turns, but basically you wrote something, and I wrote something else, and then you wrote something else. It was never really a conversation. It was better, he said." The IDIOT may not drive towards any climatic event or meaning but its piquant meanderings fill the pages with fresh awareness for the potents of languages. "Whole oceans of rain seemed to be pouring out of the sky. We sat under an awning near a hotel parking lot and ate yellow plums. Within minutes the sun was blazing as if it didn't remember a thing."
No comments:
Post a Comment