THE IDIOT by ELIF BATUMAN (2017)

The Idiot was one of the two finalists for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize. I don't understand that, at all. I would have thought that a book deserving of such serious consideration would be one that had something important to say and that stayed in the mind long after it was finished. This novel is clever and dryly humorous, but it has nothing new to offer and is immediately forgettable. It is a coming-of-age story, but the protagonist is one few will relate to.

Selin is a first-generation Turkish American who is an intellectually gifted freshman at Harvard in the 1990s. The story follows her through her first year of college as she makes new friends and adjusts to new surroundings, and particularly as she becomes obsessed with a fellow student through an e-mail correspondence. When she finally begins to talk in person to her e-mail "love," she finds that he has a girl friend and is about to graduate and leave for California. Nevertheless, she takes a summer job teaching English in a Hungarian village, because he is a Hungarian who is returning home and she may be able to see him there. They do meet. He leaves. She goes to Turkey to visit her aunts. The End.

I have obviously somewhat spoiled this novel for anyone who might want to read it, because I would recommend passing it by. It is narrated by the protagonist at an unnamed time after the action, in a semi-diary form. Much of it consists of mundane and boring actions and conversations which do nothing to advance the story. The tone, which is ironical and supercilious, is extremely off-putting, at least to me. The author does nothing to encourage sympathy or empathy for the protagonist. The author herself is a Turkish American who attended Harvard in the 1900s, so one aspect of the novel I found puzzling: all the students the protagonist encounters are first-generation Americans from other countries, mainly Eastern Europe, or international students. Did the author not attend college with any American citizens from Western Europe who had been here for generations?

Some of the action involves satires of the pretentiousness of Harvard professors, which are humorous. The author also has a felicity for apt and original metaphors. Still, these do make up for all the defects I perceive.

Despite the glowing reviews and honors awarded to The Idiot, I did not like it. Oh, well.