The Idiot

2.5/5

If you like cleopatra and frankenstein by coco mellors then you'll probably enjoy this. but i did not like c&f so i did not like this either.

I enjoyed reading about selin's college experience, her detailed descriptions of her courses and how she felt about university altogether. one of the reasons i actually read this book.

what i did not like was the main character herself. she was as the title said “the idiot”. how did she get into harvard if she is such a dumbass? she is so fucking boring and dull. she has no interesting thoughts, there is nothing happening for her. 400 pages were of her talking about herself, her thoughts, that basically were trying to articulate how to deal with Ivan. And dear god!!! Ivan was the worst. Ivan is a good example of incel. he had a girlfriend, but then she would be ex-girlfriend, then girlfriend again. he flirted with selin nonstop. he tried to get her to take off her clothes every chance he got. he used her for his own pleasure. svetlana was right, he was using her for an experiment because she was easy.

a booktuber said that this is basically a memoir for the author herself. she is a diaspora and it fucking shows in this book. she constantly talks about turkey in the context that it colonized hungary that you would think shes apologizing to the hungarian people which is fine, but why is it redundantly mentioned in every other paragraph. she made the love interest be from the said country and would constantly talk about how turkey invaded and left traces in hungary. in the second part of the book, she constantly mentions this. here are some things she said that bothered me:

“If it wasn't for the Islamic obsession with baths, then there might not be a public bath tradition in Budapest,”

and here is something ivan said that deeply bothered me:

“I'm not saying I would kill anyone. I just have violent thoughts on the tram, and it helps me relate to Dostoevsky. You never have such thoughts”

this book is mentioned under “if ur feeling lost in your 20s” and it doesnt do anything to help me feel better. maybe except that i am glad i am not selin, and i am not in love with someone like ivan.

this book sucked