Alana Estelle

You know what I love? When I pick up a book that I’m expecting to feel, at most, neutral about, and then it becomes an extremely enjoyable reading experience. 

I was not expecting to be enamored by Elif Batsman’s The Idiot, but at the halfway point, I’m completely hooked!

Ah, this is such a fun and interesting novel - I can’t wait to write up my notes/annotations and compile the final review because there is SO much to discuss here. 

Batuman provides so much commentary on languages and and how different languages have an effect on perception. For example, you can say the same thing in two different languages, but based on the grammatical rules and structures of those languages, the interpretation of meaning becomes fluid. How do we know we are accurately articulating what we mean, in a way that can be comprehended by others? So much gets “lost in translation.” 

While at Harvard, the main character, Selin, is really struggling to understand and be understood. She feels adrift in the world around her and one can really draw comparisons with Raskolnikov in Crime & Punishment. Where we may ask if Raskolnikov is really the “crazy” one, or is everyone else around him “crazy,” we can asked the same about Selin. Is she really “the idiot” (also paying homage to Dostoevsky’s The Idiot) or is she really seeing things from a higher plane than everyone else, and that internal tension between seeing and feeling things more deeply compared to those around her is pushing her further and further into isolation and towards an existential crisis? 

And then there is Ivan, the Hungarian senior majoring in mathematics, who Selin is hopelessly infatuated with. Their primarily e-mail based relationship is frustrating, but I actually think it’s realistic in a lot of ways. 

I also find this novel to be incredibly funny. I mean … the blatant 90s references are really entertaining. Batuman is shouting out things I’d completely forgotten about, like how Chili’s, the American restaurant chain, took the fried onion flower appetizer off their menu, once Men’s Health magazine said it was 3000 calories and totally unhealthy. (Does anyone else remember this?). It’s also not everyday that the dinky little town you were born in, in western Massachusetts gets a shoutout!

Batuman titling this book The Idiot really has a triple meaning, but I’ll discuss that in my final review. The sequel to The Idiot will be released this May and before starting this book, it wasn’t on my radar. Well, I’ve changed my mind and I’m totally invested. The day Either/Or drops, I’m snatching it up. 

I know people tend to either like this book or it just doesn’t click (which I find ironically humorous because the entire novel is really based on this premise of the subjective understanding of language and the creative arts). Have you read this and what were your thoughts? 

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I don’t know what’s gotten into me lately, but I’ve been on a bit of a book buying spree. I’ve some across these new-to-me texts and I needed them ASAP. 

I picked up Cassandra and Ariadne because anything dealing with Ancient Greece I need, so there’s that. Also, can we admire how beautiful both of these book covers are?

My friend Lauren started her independent online book shop - if you are in the UK please check her out - Lauren is the best! She currently has Grove by, Esther Kinsky on her site and the description sounds like something I would enjoy - overly detailed writing about almost nothing but observations, with a bit of an existential crisis? Sign me up! Thus, I came across River by the same author and said, to myself, “Why not? Go big, or go home. Get both!” Also, I just couldn’t resist the Fitzcarraldo Editions - this deep blue and white typeface screams understated, minimalistic, literary and a bit pretentious. All things I’m oddly attractive too... Side Note: When people first meet me in person, they think I’m stuck up LOL. I’m actually pretty down to earth, but so what if I like to go grocery shopping, sometimes dressed to the nines in a cashmere sweater and velvet smoking slippers? Life is short, embrace the luxurious. I also have serious RBF, so that doesn’t help my case much…

Milkman is a novel, that when I looked into the plot, it really intrigued me. Lyrical writing, a bit stream-of-consciousness, a touch dystopian for some readers, though it’s actually about what happened in Ireland in the 1970s. Who knew such a vibrant pink cover (for any one who doesn’t know, I have a slight aversion to bright pink shades; I live in black and grey…) was encasing something rather eerie. I know, I know, don’t judge a book by it’s cover, yet here we are…

Speaking of pink, how about some millennial pink? Actually, if I’m drawn to pink, I do prefer softer, dustier pink shades, which I call “champagne pink.” Not quite the millennial pink we have here, but dustier, more neutral.  Regardless, Severance and The Idiot are toted are “Millennial Fiction,” typically meaning the main character is fed up with the hamster wheel of life. What made me pick these titles up is actually due to another book I’m (slowly) reading - At the Existentialist Cafe by, Sarah Bakewell. I would like to dig a bit deeper into these modern novels, and not just ones written by millennials, but other novels that also focus on the minutiae of life in the 21-century (I.e. ducks, Newburyport) and how this tension between outward material success, internal worries, and the monotony of everyday life seem to be inadvertently alluding back to the philosophy of existentialism. Whether authors are intending this or not, I think it’ll be an interesting conversation to have. 

Have you read any of these books? Have you purchased any books recently?