Either/Or: From the bestselling author of THE IDIOT

Enjoyed this a lot, the intelligence and the humour of the writer. It is a continuation of THE IDIOT, an earlier novel. It still involves Selin's unrequited love for Ivan and her choosing to live an "aesthetic" life, as opposed to an "ethical" one. Written as auto-fiction, I believe I read somewhere.

Either or is so good I wish selin was real 💔

not that well written

When I bought this book I was not aware it was a sequel to "The Idiot." This is definitely not a stand-alone sequel, as the beginning is largely taken up with references to what mysteriously unfolded the previous summer with someone named Ivan with whom the narrator is for some reason obsessed, but we don't get more than passing references to the backstory.I really wanted to love a story that was so much about grappling with ideas, novels, and philosophy. And some of the passages were beautiful and witty. Sometimes the understated, deliberately unemotional writing packed a punch. At others, it was unsatisfying, because in the interests (it seemed to me) of writing in this particular unemotional, pared down style, we got a lot about what the narrator thought and very little about what she felt. A number of times in the book, between the deadpan mannerisms, what seemed to me to be taking refuge in facts and information, and literalisms, I wondered whether she was on the autism spectrum. I found this actually rather fascinating.But as the book went on I became increasingly disappointed, because the style Batumen works in began to make her character seem more and more shallow. Example: "...the 'Woman Question'... turned p in nineteenth century novels... the Woman Question... was about where women could have jobs and money. The things some people considered a 'question.'"Or this: "It wasn't dark yet when he came. He said he had never been to this town before. 'So show me what's here,' he said. And I showed him."What in the world are we supposed to make of that? Of of the narrator deciding, despite the fact that he has already shown evidence of violence and manipulation, that she should have sex with a man because not doing so would be problematic because he appeared to have a mental disability: "But wasn't it shallow and elitist and somehow snottily feminine to hold that against him?" Seriously? There were only a few pages left go but at that point I was just really done with this narrator.And to top it off, while she's riffing on the supposedly life-changing read of Portrait of a Lady, she claims to "understand [my friends] all, at least a little bit, and better than they could understand each other." I burst out laughing at that point.

Elif Batuman is such a good writer that it's almost painful, though not so painful that I can ever stop reading. Reading "Either/Or," even more than reading her prior novel, "The Idiot," is an experience of watching a virtuoso perform: I'm both loving it and pretty sure I'm not even getting all of it. Sort of like visiting a major Duomo in Florence or going to the Louvre: I'm aware that I'm here but aware that I should be paying closer attention. But it's so good I don't want to slow down, semi-promising myself I will go back later and REALLY focus. This book makes me feel both smart and dumb, in the best possible way: smart that I can follow her great wit and most of the references, and dumb that I feel my brain really needs to work harder, perhaps the way it did before the internet came along. Also, I went to the same college that Selin/Elif did and I wasn't a legacy, so I *should* have the ability to fathom all this and I kind of love it that it takes effort. Long-story short, I'm a fanboy of her novels and if you don't like them, you're just another boring normie. ALSO, IT'S SO FUNNY.