{"id":1423,"date":"2025-10-11T07:41:30","date_gmt":"2025-10-11T07:41:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aerowalsh.com\/mountaindevil\/?p=1423"},"modified":"2026-01-17T05:54:47","modified_gmt":"2026-01-17T05:54:47","slug":"the-idiot-elif-batuman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/?p=1423","title":{"rendered":"The Idiot \u2013 Elif Batuman"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Recommend: Yes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I really, really, really liked <em>The Idiot<\/em>. Elif Batuman tackles every difficult-to-master trope of Sad Girl literature:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>The academically gifted but highly pretentious love interest<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The rich but self-aware girl protagonist<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The independent and brutally honest best friend<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>A European jaunt<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Email correspondence that covers multiple chapters<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>A play within a play<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The writer writing a writer.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>And goddamn she does a good job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Even though <em>The Idiot<\/em> stretches for more than 400 pages, it didn\u2019t feel repetitive or boring. Reading it was a joyful experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The writing was clear \u2013 scenes were drawn so vividly I felt like I was watching an episode of Girls. The characters were engaging. There were so many funny character-driven set ups that nearly always came to a satisfying (sometimes even laugh out loud) end. Probably most impressive was that I ended up emotionally invested in the central romance that loosely keeps the plot moving forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>We were walking on some sort of highway, alongside multiple lanes of whooshing cars and trucks. We came upon a grassy island in the road. There were some chairs on the grass, and a rusty shovel, like props in some depressing play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cMaybe this is where we should sit,\u201d Ivan said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We sat on the chairs and opened the box of strawberries. I took a strawberry. I saw that it was covered with dirt. We didn\u2019t have any water, so I brushed it off as best I could with my hand and ate it. It was crunchy with dirt. I took another. It looked just as dirty as the first. I held it for a long time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ivan and I both stared at the strawberry I was holding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI can\u2019t,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He nodded. \u201cWe\u2019ll have to bury it.\u201d He stood, picked up the rusty shovel, and stepped on the blade to penetrate the hard earth. He dug a small hole and we put in the strawberry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We buried all the strawberries and resumed our walk.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Possibly the biggest compliment I can give a book is that I enjoyed reading it on a plane. Base case for airflight for me is sensory deprivation. I am stuck in a cloud bound metal death wish. Why choose consciousness? For a book to draw me out of this catatonic state is a great and admirable achievement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Just don\u2019t read the blurb \u2013 it pretty much gave the entire plot of the book away. The fact that the whole novel could be placed so easily within a summary paragraph did make me reconsider if I liked it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I did.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I hadn&#8217;t learned anything at all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1426,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews_books","category-recommended_cait"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1423"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1423\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1635,"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1423\/revisions\/1635"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}