The Idiot

This is a novel about a young woman's first year of college. Her name is Selin, she's Turkish-American, and she goes to Harvard and enrolls somewhat haphazardly in a bunch of classes she doesn't know anything about. That much could be a synopsis of the entire novel actually: she follows her curiosity, almost in spite of her self doubt and her awkwardness. She follows her curiosity doggedly. One of the places it leads her is into a stilted relationship with an older Hungarian math student who is about to graduate. She allows him to enroll her in a program that sends her to Hungary for the summer, where she is supposed to live in a village and teach English to schoolchildren.

I loved Selin, although I struggled with seeing her as passive, allowing things to happen to her when she could have taken a more active role. One of the things I admired about her was her willingness to see would happen as she let each situation play out (no spoilers, but there aren't any awful situations here). Her observations are so funny, and seem to come from such a fresh perspective, that she really is a delight.

Also, I guess I should read Dostoevsky's The Idiot now, to see what the references are.