This book can be read on many levels – for a linguist like me, its linguistic observations were a blast of fresh air, for a historian it is rich with commentary, and for a writer or avid reader, the allusions are legion, including the title, which pays homage to the eponymous novel by Dostoevsky. (MyContinue reading “BOOK REVIEW: The Idiot, by Elif Batuman”
I put down the book discouraged and unimpressed, though a little better informed about people I know who have been tragically transformed by a childhood violation.
I have heard a great deal about the haughtiness and self-satisfaction of “Yankees,” and when Vance refers to “Americans,” that is who he is referring to – the types he met at Yale
THE BOOK OF TEA and WHAT THE STONES REMEMBER
How many risks would I be willing to take to find an egg for my family?
I, the happy, hopeful, hippy cannot connect to this disjointed, disaffected, nihilist. Her goals trickle only so faintly outside of herself.
We have never known characters who are quite like them, yet they stand there fully human. The story is a little bit like a dream or a nightmare, but it has blood .
It is a unique kind of literature, written by a first-time author who is an artist to his fingertips but has probably never taken a writing course.
I doubt that Min Jin Lee began her book as a didactic exercise in tolerating prejudice and cruelty – there is way too much humanity in it for that, but we can use it to examine our own reactions to injustice.