Batuman's first novel is as finely written and dryly funny as her collection of essays. Selin is a Turkish-American student in her first year at Harvard, a young woman who, despite her intelligence, struggles to understand the world around her -- American culture, adulthood, love, academic jargon, and especially language. Perhaps because she has an aptitude for the latter, she obsesses over the meaning of every word spoken to her, wondering if she can ever truly understand what another person is trying to say. In particular, the painfully awkward, often frustrating, sometimes wonderful exchanges she has with her crush are made worse by her inability to pick up romantic social cues (and his inability to not be a jerk).
It's not just Ivan; Selin doesn't quite fit in with any of the others in her orbit, be they her Turkish relatives, the privileged Americans at her school, her Yugoslavian best friend, the working class Bostonians she tutors, or the Hungarian villagers she spends the summer with. She is like a particularly endearing alien, trying to make sense of life on this planet. Batuman's distinctive writing style -- blunt, deceptively simple sentences -- perfectly conveys the distance Selin feels, aided by descriptions of other characters that rely almost exclusively on their words, rather than physical cues or other behavior that might help us see what Selin can't. Instead we become thoroughly enmeshed in Selin's worldview, sympathizing as she tries to figure out what it all means.
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