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Selin #2
Either/Or
Selin is trying to get over her unrequited love for Ivan. Taking EITHER/OR as her starting point, she tries to figure out if she wants to lead an aesthetic life or an ethical life, the dilemma at the heart of Kierkegaard's famous tome.
This is a coming of age story, a campus novel, a novel about identity and a novel about navigating sex and love. It's also about the human condition and trying to understand the human condition through writing, a place where you figure out what you were doing and why.
Throughout the novel Selin finds herself at once repulsed and attracted to men, exploring her own sexuality and physical experiences of sex in a way that feels very fresh and important - inviting us to question the seemingly non-negotiable role played by sex in narratives about women's lives.
This is a coming of age story, a campus novel, a novel about identity and a novel about navigating sex and love. It's also about the human condition and trying to understand the human condition through writing, a place where you figure out what you were doing and why.
Throughout the novel Selin finds herself at once repulsed and attracted to men, exploring her own sexuality and physical experiences of sex in a way that feels very fresh and important - inviting us to question the seemingly non-negotiable role played by sex in narratives about women's lives.
Audible Audio
First published January 1, 2022
2512 people are currently reading
89863 people want to read
About the author
Elif Batuman
17 books4,072 followersElif Batuman is an American author, academic, and journalist. Born in New York City to Turkish parents, she grew up in New Jersey. She graduated from Harvard College and received her doctorate in comparative literature from Stanford University, where she taught.
Batuman is currently the writer-in-residence at Koç University. While in graduate school, she studied the Uzbek language in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. Her dissertation, titled, "The Windmill and the Giant: Double-Entry Bookkeeping in the Novel," is about the process of social research and solitary construction undertaken by novelists. In 2007, she was the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award. In February 2010, she published her first book, The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them, which details her experiences as a graduate student.
She has also published pieces in The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, and n+1. Her writing has been described as "almost helplessly epigrammatical." She resides in Twin Peaks, San Francisco.
Batuman is currently the writer-in-residence at Koç University. While in graduate school, she studied the Uzbek language in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. Her dissertation, titled, "The Windmill and the Giant: Double-Entry Bookkeeping in the Novel," is about the process of social research and solitary construction undertaken by novelists. In 2007, she was the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award. In February 2010, she published her first book, The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them, which details her experiences as a graduate student.
She has also published pieces in The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, and n+1. Her writing has been described as "almost helplessly epigrammatical." She resides in Twin Peaks, San Francisco.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 5,724 reviews
June 8, 2022
I just adore Elif Batuman. Everything she writes–every self-indulgent, immature, fanciful, pseudo-intellectual, curious, confused confession–feels like it's targeted directly at me; or a younger me I hope I've grown out of, but who I recognize with pity and mirth. Either/Or and its predecessor capture better than any book I've ever read the experience of coming up in academia in the humanities - the way we try, helplessly, to match the difficult ideas we're encountering with our personal messes. Selin I will always love you.
August 12, 2022
SALLY ROONEY YOURE OVERRRRRR
August 20, 2022
Elif Batumen is a comedian. Feels like there has to be another sequel?
July 22, 2022
the world is often a cruel and unusual place, but i would forgive it all its transgressions if selin's college career becomes a four-book series.
it's very rare to find a character one finds endlessly interesting, whose every thought and musing is fascinating, and even rarer to find it as the protagonist of a character-driven novel, and even rarer to find it in a compelling narrative, and even rarer to find it surrounded by beautiful writing.
what else to say! this isn't quite the magic of the idiot but it's so damn close.
bottom line: more please.
4.5
----------------
currently-reading updates
it would be self-centered and presumptuous to say that i am more excited to read this than anyone on earth.
but it's also a sin to lie...
----------------
tbr review
medically need to read this
it's very rare to find a character one finds endlessly interesting, whose every thought and musing is fascinating, and even rarer to find it as the protagonist of a character-driven novel, and even rarer to find it in a compelling narrative, and even rarer to find it surrounded by beautiful writing.
what else to say! this isn't quite the magic of the idiot but it's so damn close.
bottom line: more please.
4.5
----------------
currently-reading updates
it would be self-centered and presumptuous to say that i am more excited to read this than anyone on earth.
but it's also a sin to lie...
----------------
tbr review
medically need to read this
November 24, 2024
"That’s why Madame Bovary had to be too dumb and banal to write Madame Bovary: so Flaubert could have a great humane moment where he said he was Madame Bovary. But I wasn’t dumb, or banal, and I lived in the future. Nobody was going to trick me into marrying some loser, and even if they did, I would write the goddamn book myself."
Are you telling me I now have to wait another five years for the sequel to this sequel, which will inevitably be called Portrait of a Lady and set in Moscow, 1997?
Are you telling me I now have to wait another five years for the sequel to this sequel, which will inevitably be called Portrait of a Lady and set in Moscow, 1997?
August 21, 2022
I am very sorry to report that the dramatically descending red arrow on the cover of Either/Or can be used as a symbolic image of my mood while reading this new novel by Elif Batuman. I literally kept checking the name of the author to make sure the sequel to
The Idiot
was written by the same person. Some fragments sounded like auto-parody or fanfiction.
Basically, the protagonist does five things in Either/Or:
1. Explores her sexuality with a plethora of random guys she met a few minutes/hours ago;
2. Summarizes some books she read, spoilers included;
3. Basks in self-indulgence;
4. Recalls her childhood memories;
5. Skates gracefully on the surface of philosophical and literary issues, bestrewing the ice with 'Kierkegaard, Proust, Breton et altri' sprinkle
Compared to The Idiot...
...what is gone?
* Crispy freshness;
* Lustre;
* Warmth;
* Charm;
* Humour;
* Lightness;
* Subtlety;
* Ivan (only physically).
...what is new?
* Boredom;
* Perceptible efforts to be entertaining;
* Details of Selin's sex life in abundance. I wonder if the author was criticised for lack of sex in the first part and now she was trying hard to play catch up?;
* Passages which look like notes from actual seminars and lectures;
* Portraying people as stereotypical national caricatures — please, check the Turkish men Selin encountered during her trip;
* Selin's personality, radically transformed in a few months. How I missed the socially awkward, timid, smart, hilarious introvert from The Idiot!
As for sequels and second seasons, I usually try to keep my hopes low but I did not anticipate Either/Or to be such a colossal disappointment from almost all fronts. Sometimes a shadow of The Idiot's brilliance flickered shily, sometimes I pondered on the author's originality, talent and acuity. Still, I cringed for the most part. It felt as if Elif Batuman was terrorised by the editors to continue the series against her will and sabotaged it secretly.
Painting by Ana Maria Edulescu.
Basically, the protagonist does five things in Either/Or:
1. Explores her sexuality with a plethora of random guys she met a few minutes/hours ago;
2. Summarizes some books she read, spoilers included;
3. Basks in self-indulgence;
4. Recalls her childhood memories;
5. Skates gracefully on the surface of philosophical and literary issues, bestrewing the ice with 'Kierkegaard, Proust, Breton et altri' sprinkle
Compared to The Idiot...
...what is gone?
* Crispy freshness;
* Lustre;
* Warmth;
* Charm;
* Humour;
* Lightness;
* Subtlety;
* Ivan (only physically).
...what is new?
* Boredom;
* Perceptible efforts to be entertaining;
* Details of Selin's sex life in abundance. I wonder if the author was criticised for lack of sex in the first part and now she was trying hard to play catch up?;
* Passages which look like notes from actual seminars and lectures;
* Portraying people as stereotypical national caricatures — please, check the Turkish men Selin encountered during her trip;
* Selin's personality, radically transformed in a few months. How I missed the socially awkward, timid, smart, hilarious introvert from The Idiot!
As for sequels and second seasons, I usually try to keep my hopes low but I did not anticipate Either/Or to be such a colossal disappointment from almost all fronts. Sometimes a shadow of The Idiot's brilliance flickered shily, sometimes I pondered on the author's originality, talent and acuity. Still, I cringed for the most part. It felt as if Elif Batuman was terrorised by the editors to continue the series against her will and sabotaged it secretly.
Painting by Ana Maria Edulescu.
Want to read
November 18, 2021THE IDIOT PT 2?? SCREAMING CRYING THROWING UP
May 26, 2022
It pains me to give this rating. I think Batuman is a fantastic writer,
The Idiot
an exquisite novel – a masterpiece, even – and Selin a wonderful creation. Yet my initial reaction to the idea of Either/Or was more dread than excitement; I felt The Idiot just didn’t need a sequel, that there’s something in the very nature of such a perfectly self-contained coming-of-age story that makes a continuation feel like blasphemy. I should have stuck with that instinct and not read it at all, as doing so didn’t change my mind. The Selin in Either/Or feels like the work of a very talented fanfic writer rather than the same character from The Idiot. With the connection I felt to the first book thus severed, the narrative just reads as a series of barely related observations. I was reminded of how it feels to read the biography of a beloved celebrity and realise that everything you thought you had in common with them is actually part of a deliberately constructed public image.
The irony isn’t lost on me that some of the thoughts I’ve had about this book – does any extension of a Bildungsroman corrupt its essence? – feel like things Selin herself might contemplate within the narrative. (As the title suggests, it riffs on Kierkegaard’s Either/Or, with Selin debating the merits of the aesthetic vs. the ethical life.) I hoped for a moment of revelation where everything would suddenly click, but it never came. The good news is that if you didn’t have an intense personal attachment to The Idiot (and maybe even if you did), you can disregard everything I’ve said about Either/Or. For my part, I will now be trying my best to forget it exists, like I had to with Blues Brothers 2000.
I received an advance review copy of Either/Or from the publisher through Edelweiss.
TinyLetter | Linktree
The irony isn’t lost on me that some of the thoughts I’ve had about this book – does any extension of a Bildungsroman corrupt its essence? – feel like things Selin herself might contemplate within the narrative. (As the title suggests, it riffs on Kierkegaard’s Either/Or, with Selin debating the merits of the aesthetic vs. the ethical life.) I hoped for a moment of revelation where everything would suddenly click, but it never came. The good news is that if you didn’t have an intense personal attachment to The Idiot (and maybe even if you did), you can disregard everything I’ve said about Either/Or. For my part, I will now be trying my best to forget it exists, like I had to with Blues Brothers 2000.
I received an advance review copy of Either/Or from the publisher through Edelweiss.
TinyLetter | Linktree
May 23, 2023
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This sequel needs a sequel.
In Either/Or we are reunited with Selin as she continues to navigate the trials and tribulations of adulthood. Now a sophomore student at Harvard, Selin has plenty to keep her occupied: her studies inspire her to question the choices she and others have made, the direction of her life, the meaning of love, sex, and connection, the limitations of language, and, of course, her relationship with Ivan, the Hungarian student whose mind remains to Selin, and by extension us, as unreadable as ever. Did she care for her at all?
Selin’s propensity for long asides is as present as ever and I loved losing myself in her inner monologue. Her long acts of introspections do often come across as navel-gazing (curiously enough the narrative itself mentions navel-gazing), but I never felt bored or annoyed by it. If anything, Selin’s solipsistic inclination for self-interrogation made her all the more realistic. That she refers to books, music, films, and authors to make sense of herself and others results in a deeply intratextual narrative that will definitely appeal to literary students. While Selin isn’t wholly enamoured by academia, we can see how her studies and the books she reads inform the way she understands her world and those who populate it. She often draws parallels between her own life and those of historical and fictional figures. Some of the authors/artists/etc. she mentions include: Kazuo Ishiguro, Fiona Apple, Charles Baudelaire, Pushkin, Shakespeare, André Breton, and of course, Soren Kierkegaard’s Either/Or.
Of course, at times these books and figures only add further confusion, so Selin is unsure whether she’s idealizing herself and others so that her life can resemble those she encounters in fiction. More often than not knowledge fails her, so she’s unable to decipher not only the motivations of others but her own true feelings.
Her writerly aspirations too preoccupy her and so do the changes that come about in her life. Selin’s intense friendship and rivalry with Svetlana is threatened when the latter finds a boyfriend. Her roommates too have plenty of things that keep them occupied so Selin finds herself going to parties where she meets less than ideal men. Yet even as Selin forms sexual relationships with them, she longs for Ivan and obsesses over what his infrequent emails leave unsaid.
Either/Or shares the same structure with The Idiot so we follow Selin month by month during her academic year before tagging alongside her as she once again goes abroad for the summer. In Turkey she finds herself forming unexpected connections but remains somewhat remote to them.
Sardonic and adroit Either/Or makes for a fantastic read. While Selin does change over the course of her sophomore year, she also remains very much herself. She can be reserved and slightly baffling at times, and yet she’s also capable of making some very insightful or relatable comments. She’s intelligent, somewhat naive, and has a penchant for overthinking and obsessing over minor things. Her deadpan sense of humor and little idiosyncrasies make her character really pop out of the page. I could definitely relate to her many many uncertainties, as well as her fixation with understanding the person who never seemed to reciprocate her feelings.
As I mentioned already over the course of her second year at Harvard Selin grows into a more self-assured person while also remaining strangely static. Her mental meanderings often included reflections on things such as desirability, belonging, love, heartbreak, self-fulfilment, choice & chance, and I found her perspective on these things deeply compelling. At times her mind is preoccupied with mundane thoughts, at times she loses herself in philosophical and existentialist questions about human nature.
Batuman’s inclusion of the minutiae of her protagonist’s life (such as inserting a tampon: “I tried again to put in a tampon. ABSOLUTELY NO FUCKING WAY.”) made Selin’s reality at Harvard all the more vivid. I could easily envision the different environments she occupies, as well as the people who inhabit those places. This combined with the mumblecore dialogues and Selin’s recursive inner monologue, which borders on being a stream of consciousness, give Either/Or quality of hyperrealism. That is, even when confronted with moments of surreality or scenes of a comedic nature, I believed completely in what I was reading. A sense of 90s nostalgia permeates her story which adds to the narrative’s overall atmosphere and aesthetic.
I loved this novel so thoroughly that I was sad to reach its inevitable conclusion. I hope with all my heart that Batuman will write a third instalment where we will follow Selin during her third year at Harvard.
If you enjoyed The Idiot chances us you will, like me, love this even more (perhaps because batuman is expanding on the 'universe' she already established). If you are a fan of the young-alienated-women subgenre you should definitely consider picking these series up.
My eternal gratitude to the publisher for providing me with an arc.
This sequel needs a sequel.
“Was this the decisive moment of my life? It felt as if the gap that had dogged me all my days was knitting together before my eyes—so that, from this point on, my life would be as coherent and meaningful as my favorite books. At the same time, I had a powerful sense of having escaped something: of having finally stepped outside the script.”
In Either/Or we are reunited with Selin as she continues to navigate the trials and tribulations of adulthood. Now a sophomore student at Harvard, Selin has plenty to keep her occupied: her studies inspire her to question the choices she and others have made, the direction of her life, the meaning of love, sex, and connection, the limitations of language, and, of course, her relationship with Ivan, the Hungarian student whose mind remains to Selin, and by extension us, as unreadable as ever. Did she care for her at all?
There was something abstract and gentle about the experience of being ignored—a feeling of being spared, a known impossibility of anything happening—that was consonant with my understanding of love.
Selin’s propensity for long asides is as present as ever and I loved losing myself in her inner monologue. Her long acts of introspections do often come across as navel-gazing (curiously enough the narrative itself mentions navel-gazing), but I never felt bored or annoyed by it. If anything, Selin’s solipsistic inclination for self-interrogation made her all the more realistic. That she refers to books, music, films, and authors to make sense of herself and others results in a deeply intratextual narrative that will definitely appeal to literary students. While Selin isn’t wholly enamoured by academia, we can see how her studies and the books she reads inform the way she understands her world and those who populate it. She often draws parallels between her own life and those of historical and fictional figures. Some of the authors/artists/etc. she mentions include: Kazuo Ishiguro, Fiona Apple, Charles Baudelaire, Pushkin, Shakespeare, André Breton, and of course, Soren Kierkegaard’s Either/Or.
“There was something about crying so much, the way it made my body so limp and hot and shuddering, that made me feel closer to sex. Maybe there was a line where sex and total sadness touched—one of those surprising borders that turned out to exist, like the one between Italy and Slovenia. Music, too, was adjacent. It was like Trieste, which was Italian and Slovenian and also somehow Austrian.”
Of course, at times these books and figures only add further confusion, so Selin is unsure whether she’s idealizing herself and others so that her life can resemble those she encounters in fiction. More often than not knowledge fails her, so she’s unable to decipher not only the motivations of others but her own true feelings.
Her writerly aspirations too preoccupy her and so do the changes that come about in her life. Selin’s intense friendship and rivalry with Svetlana is threatened when the latter finds a boyfriend. Her roommates too have plenty of things that keep them occupied so Selin finds herself going to parties where she meets less than ideal men. Yet even as Selin forms sexual relationships with them, she longs for Ivan and obsesses over what his infrequent emails leave unsaid.
“It seemed to me that the elements whirling around me in my own life were also somehow held in place by Ivan’s absence, or were there because of him—to counterbalance a void.”
Either/Or shares the same structure with The Idiot so we follow Selin month by month during her academic year before tagging alongside her as she once again goes abroad for the summer. In Turkey she finds herself forming unexpected connections but remains somewhat remote to them.
Sardonic and adroit Either/Or makes for a fantastic read. While Selin does change over the course of her sophomore year, she also remains very much herself. She can be reserved and slightly baffling at times, and yet she’s also capable of making some very insightful or relatable comments. She’s intelligent, somewhat naive, and has a penchant for overthinking and obsessing over minor things. Her deadpan sense of humor and little idiosyncrasies make her character really pop out of the page. I could definitely relate to her many many uncertainties, as well as her fixation with understanding the person who never seemed to reciprocate her feelings.
The one that started “Days like this, I don’t know what to do with myself” made me feel certain that I had spent my whole life not knowing what to do with myself—all day, and all night. “I wander the halls . . .” That was exactly it: not the streets, like a flâneur, but the halls. Oh, I knew just which halls.
As I mentioned already over the course of her second year at Harvard Selin grows into a more self-assured person while also remaining strangely static. Her mental meanderings often included reflections on things such as desirability, belonging, love, heartbreak, self-fulfilment, choice & chance, and I found her perspective on these things deeply compelling. At times her mind is preoccupied with mundane thoughts, at times she loses herself in philosophical and existentialist questions about human nature.
Batuman’s inclusion of the minutiae of her protagonist’s life (such as inserting a tampon: “I tried again to put in a tampon. ABSOLUTELY NO FUCKING WAY.”) made Selin’s reality at Harvard all the more vivid. I could easily envision the different environments she occupies, as well as the people who inhabit those places. This combined with the mumblecore dialogues and Selin’s recursive inner monologue, which borders on being a stream of consciousness, give Either/Or quality of hyperrealism. That is, even when confronted with moments of surreality or scenes of a comedic nature, I believed completely in what I was reading. A sense of 90s nostalgia permeates her story which adds to the narrative’s overall atmosphere and aesthetic.
“It was the golden time of year. Every day the leaves grew brighter, the air sharper, the grass more brilliant. The sunsets seemed to expand and melt and stretch for hours, and the brick façades glowed pink, and everything blue got bluer. How many perfect autumns did a person get? Why did I seem always to be in the wrong place, listening to the wrong music?”
I loved this novel so thoroughly that I was sad to reach its inevitable conclusion. I hope with all my heart that Batuman will write a third instalment where we will follow Selin during her third year at Harvard.
If you enjoyed The Idiot chances us you will, like me, love this even more (perhaps because batuman is expanding on the 'universe' she already established). If you are a fan of the young-alienated-women subgenre you should definitely consider picking these series up.
My eternal gratitude to the publisher for providing me with an arc.
September 12, 2022
I can’t wait to see what wacky things Selin gets up to in her junior year ^-^
June 17, 2022
Am I, in giving this three stars, being generous?
Did I think a sequel to The Idiot was necessary, and do I now, having finished the sequel to The Idiot, think it was necessary?
Did I think the first three quarters of this novel, in which Selin reads texts for a lit course about chance and listens to Fiona Apple, was as stimulating and smart as The Idiot?
Did I find myself missing the parts of Selin’s life in which things happened?
Was I initially charmed by her friendships with Svetlana and new-roommate Riley before the exegeses began, and then found myself wearied by them?
Did I, admittedly, sink fully into the last quarter of the novel in which things began to happen and Selin’s musings were paired with events?
Were I to search, could I find a single page of this book on which there is not a rhetorical question?
Do I think a novel can be formed solely of rhetorical questions?
Do I think a Goodreads review can be formed solely of rhetorical questions?
Did I think a sequel to The Idiot was necessary, and do I now, having finished the sequel to The Idiot, think it was necessary?
Did I think the first three quarters of this novel, in which Selin reads texts for a lit course about chance and listens to Fiona Apple, was as stimulating and smart as The Idiot?
Did I find myself missing the parts of Selin’s life in which things happened?
Was I initially charmed by her friendships with Svetlana and new-roommate Riley before the exegeses began, and then found myself wearied by them?
Did I, admittedly, sink fully into the last quarter of the novel in which things began to happen and Selin’s musings were paired with events?
Were I to search, could I find a single page of this book on which there is not a rhetorical question?
Do I think a novel can be formed solely of rhetorical questions?
Do I think a Goodreads review can be formed solely of rhetorical questions?
January 19, 2022
ngl this book hit TOO close to the bone – painful nostalgia! is it too much to say it was almost unbearable? – but only elif batuman can close-read kierkegaard on one page and let’s go travel guide listings on the other 😭 bravo, a fitting and even more unwieldy sequel to The Idiot
May 30, 2022
“How comfortable it was to read about other peoples comfortable life”
February 10, 2023
The Idiot is one of my favorite reads not only of 2021 but of all time. Thanks to Penguin Press, I was given an advanced reader’s copy of its sequel, Either/Or, my most anticipated fiction release of 2022 (yes, including Lapvona).
Either/Or is a tongue-in-cheek reference to Soren Kierkegaard’s magnum opus of the same name. As the title suggests, the concern during her sophomore year is somewhat different: Selin has transcended a simple quest for knowledge and understanding and is now seeking out a way to assert herself in the narrative of her aesthetic (referring to the philosophical movement) life. In keeping with the same tone as The Idiot, the sequel has Selin’s signature dry humor and internally outraged exclamations.
This year, Selin is determined to learn from her romantic blunders with Ivan. As she runs into his exes through awkward in-person and online exchanges, she begins to question her perception of all of the events and interactions of the previous year. Selin’s external vulnerability begins to make an appearance during this time, which becomes obvious to her mother and friends. With any (definite or otherwise) breakup, she cries over Ivan while listening to Fiona Apple on her Walkman and smoking a cigarette. At the urging of those around her, she begins to see a (somewhat unhelpful) therapist!
After the grieving period more or less ends, Selin decides to go to parties, stumbling into flirting, losing her virginity, and contemplating, ultimately, what sex is supposed to do for women. The parallels and diametric oppositions between her and Svetlana's romantic lives this year are starker than the last. All the while, she becomes increasingly concerned with what writing means to her (a way of expressing the human condition) and with how she needs to experience things in the world in order to write about them.
As with The Idiot, Selin’s school year ends with a trip abroad — this time, she finds herself in Turkey, running away from scorned lovers and wondering what her next steps are. However, unlike last year, when she lamented that she knew “nothing at all”, Selin now feels empowered to take some control in her life.
Either/Or's brilliance lies in the idiosyncrasies and musings of the famed protagonist. As a reader with similar concerns of my own, viewing the anxieties and confusions of college in narrative form lends some form of solidarity and comfort. This book is a testament to Batuman's unmatched ability to access the mind of an anxious immigrant daughter and one I recommend to every twenty-something woman with an insuppressible interior life.
/
Just for fun, I’ve compiled a list of all the book references I found in Either/Or as a map of sorts to follow Selin’s journey through her sophomore year at Harvard:
- The Flowers of Evil - Charles Baudelaire
- Nadja - André Breton
- Mommie Dearest - Christina Crawford
- The Seducer’s Diary - Soren Kierkegaard
- Fear and Trembling - Soren Kierkegaard
- The Sorrows of Young Werther - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- The Iliad - Homer
- Against Nature - Joris-Karl Huysmans
- The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
- An Artist of the Floating World - Kazuo Ishiguro
- Either/Or - Søren Kierkegaard
- From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler - E.L. Konigsburg
- Frog and Toad are Friends - Arnold Lobel
- Eugene Onegin - Alexander Pushkin
- Hamlet - William Shakespeare
- King Lear - William Shakespeare
- Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
- The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
- Mrs. Dalloway - Virginia Woolf
- Pale Fire - Vladimir Nabokov
- The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
- Dora, Fragments of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria - Sigmund Freud
- Swann’s Way (In Search of Lost Time) - Marcel Proust
- Finnegan’s Wake - James Joyce
- The Rachel Papers - Martin Amis
- The Information - Martin Amis
- Prozac Nation - Elizabeth Wurtzel
- Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
- The Lady with the Dog- Anton Chekhov
- The Alchemist - Paulo Coehlo
- The Portrait of a Lady - Henry James
- Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
- The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand
Either/Or is a tongue-in-cheek reference to Soren Kierkegaard’s magnum opus of the same name. As the title suggests, the concern during her sophomore year is somewhat different: Selin has transcended a simple quest for knowledge and understanding and is now seeking out a way to assert herself in the narrative of her aesthetic (referring to the philosophical movement) life. In keeping with the same tone as The Idiot, the sequel has Selin’s signature dry humor and internally outraged exclamations.
This year, Selin is determined to learn from her romantic blunders with Ivan. As she runs into his exes through awkward in-person and online exchanges, she begins to question her perception of all of the events and interactions of the previous year. Selin’s external vulnerability begins to make an appearance during this time, which becomes obvious to her mother and friends. With any (definite or otherwise) breakup, she cries over Ivan while listening to Fiona Apple on her Walkman and smoking a cigarette. At the urging of those around her, she begins to see a (somewhat unhelpful) therapist!
After the grieving period more or less ends, Selin decides to go to parties, stumbling into flirting, losing her virginity, and contemplating, ultimately, what sex is supposed to do for women. The parallels and diametric oppositions between her and Svetlana's romantic lives this year are starker than the last. All the while, she becomes increasingly concerned with what writing means to her (a way of expressing the human condition) and with how she needs to experience things in the world in order to write about them.
As with The Idiot, Selin’s school year ends with a trip abroad — this time, she finds herself in Turkey, running away from scorned lovers and wondering what her next steps are. However, unlike last year, when she lamented that she knew “nothing at all”, Selin now feels empowered to take some control in her life.
Either/Or's brilliance lies in the idiosyncrasies and musings of the famed protagonist. As a reader with similar concerns of my own, viewing the anxieties and confusions of college in narrative form lends some form of solidarity and comfort. This book is a testament to Batuman's unmatched ability to access the mind of an anxious immigrant daughter and one I recommend to every twenty-something woman with an insuppressible interior life.
/
Just for fun, I’ve compiled a list of all the book references I found in Either/Or as a map of sorts to follow Selin’s journey through her sophomore year at Harvard:
- The Flowers of Evil - Charles Baudelaire
- Nadja - André Breton
- Mommie Dearest - Christina Crawford
- The Seducer’s Diary - Soren Kierkegaard
- Fear and Trembling - Soren Kierkegaard
- The Sorrows of Young Werther - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- The Iliad - Homer
- Against Nature - Joris-Karl Huysmans
- The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
- An Artist of the Floating World - Kazuo Ishiguro
- Either/Or - Søren Kierkegaard
- From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler - E.L. Konigsburg
- Frog and Toad are Friends - Arnold Lobel
- Eugene Onegin - Alexander Pushkin
- Hamlet - William Shakespeare
- King Lear - William Shakespeare
- Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
- The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
- Mrs. Dalloway - Virginia Woolf
- Pale Fire - Vladimir Nabokov
- The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
- Dora, Fragments of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria - Sigmund Freud
- Swann’s Way (In Search of Lost Time) - Marcel Proust
- Finnegan’s Wake - James Joyce
- The Rachel Papers - Martin Amis
- The Information - Martin Amis
- Prozac Nation - Elizabeth Wurtzel
- Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
- The Lady with the Dog- Anton Chekhov
- The Alchemist - Paulo Coehlo
- The Portrait of a Lady - Henry James
- Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
- The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand
June 1, 2022
when i heard elif batuman was putting out a sequel to the idiot i thought it was an indulgent, unnecessary thing to do with an extraordinary complete-feeling book. i have not per se been persuaded otherwise so much as i have come round to: who gives a shit! selin is the best protagonist of our age!!! i do not think i would appreciate this as a second book nearly as much as i appreciate it as a door to something else, to further selining. the idiot didn't "need" "a sequel" but the promise of selin into perpetuity, on a journey, is thrilling and rare—and to a purpose beyond the end of this one.
but while we're here, is this better than the idiot? is it worse? again, feels immaterial, having established they're both steps on the same path rather than a first thing and an attempted likeness. it took a while to warm up but then, the idiot took ages to wind down (i remember being so bored by the hungarian village bits in a way that i was NOWHERE NEAR bored in the corresponding turkey section here). there are hairline fractures in the voice that i never spotted in the idiot but i also feel much closer to selin in this one, whereas before i was like, what an exceptional and specific fictional mind! what an achievement to craft her on the page! it is a very selinesque dilemma, trying to figure out whether or not a book has achieved higher technical virtue because i feel more kinship with the protagonist. i doubt i'm alone in this. elif is TRULY doing it for the insufferable girls. the few the proud the recreationally intertextual (but i mean not that few, she's a bestseller). the tanya larinas.
the intertextuality is SO good in this - the most convincing love for literature, obv, but maybe my favorite bit was when selin read 'the rules' with the same intense, seriocomic scrutiny she applies to onegin. at the end of the day it is good to think about things, to affirm the pleasure of rigorous thought and push yourself towards new revelations. the things themselves can be anything. this is why the writing about sex / desire / heterosexual experience is so good in this - peak 'the things can be anything'.
and god it is so good hit 'compulsory heterosexuality' in the biblio after all the compulsory heterosexuality. ladies it IS gay to extend your intimate coming of age novel across multiple volumes, just ask elena ferrante.
but while we're here, is this better than the idiot? is it worse? again, feels immaterial, having established they're both steps on the same path rather than a first thing and an attempted likeness. it took a while to warm up but then, the idiot took ages to wind down (i remember being so bored by the hungarian village bits in a way that i was NOWHERE NEAR bored in the corresponding turkey section here). there are hairline fractures in the voice that i never spotted in the idiot but i also feel much closer to selin in this one, whereas before i was like, what an exceptional and specific fictional mind! what an achievement to craft her on the page! it is a very selinesque dilemma, trying to figure out whether or not a book has achieved higher technical virtue because i feel more kinship with the protagonist. i doubt i'm alone in this. elif is TRULY doing it for the insufferable girls. the few the proud the recreationally intertextual (but i mean not that few, she's a bestseller). the tanya larinas.
the intertextuality is SO good in this - the most convincing love for literature, obv, but maybe my favorite bit was when selin read 'the rules' with the same intense, seriocomic scrutiny she applies to onegin. at the end of the day it is good to think about things, to affirm the pleasure of rigorous thought and push yourself towards new revelations. the things themselves can be anything. this is why the writing about sex / desire / heterosexual experience is so good in this - peak 'the things can be anything'.
and god it is so good hit 'compulsory heterosexuality' in the biblio after all the compulsory heterosexuality. ladies it IS gay to extend your intimate coming of age novel across multiple volumes, just ask elena ferrante.
January 16, 2022
4-4.5 stars
only elif batuman can write a character who deeply and meaningfully tries to grapple with what an aesthetic and/or ethical life might entail but then also have her describe a man as "wearing Terminator sunglasses and resembling a potato." needless to say, i absolutely loved this.
only elif batuman can write a character who deeply and meaningfully tries to grapple with what an aesthetic and/or ethical life might entail but then also have her describe a man as "wearing Terminator sunglasses and resembling a potato." needless to say, i absolutely loved this.
October 11, 2025
not nearly as good or as hilarious as the idiot, but sequels rarely are, and this still had its laugh-out-loud moments. i continue to be charmed by elif batuman largely because of her gall, especially in an age where everyone is telling us to turn our noses up at blatant cases of autofiction (yes, i am guilty of doing this to ocean vuong). yet i am charmed by the same habits in batuman!!! she does what very few fiction writers working in english can do: she writes about an old, dead version of herself clearly, cleverly, and with real self-awareness.
sure, you could argue she's also guilty of navel-gazing, but her navel-gazing is reminiscent of someone widely read and deeply fascinated by language and culture. in other words, selin and her presumed self-importance are at the center of this series, but so too is selin's love of literature, linguistics, politics, humor, friendship, professors, romance, sex, travel, alcohol, parties, creative writing, and on and on into a beautiful intertextual limbo.....
julio cortázar put it best: “The novel wins by points, the short story by knockout." this is a phenomenon batuman is well aware of, and one she gleefully exploits in her novels. it's a habit i am very fond of in fiction: self-indulgence beyond the self, by which i mean, beyond the personal experiences of the self and its so-called ties to any given nation-state.
i like how paul laity articulated this impulse in an old guardian interview with batuman:
when i'm reading the newest wave of auto-fictitious diaspora lit, i understand the impulse to long for a/the nation-state, but it still makes me want to roll my eyes.
in the world of the idiot, selin recognizes and routinely interrogates the privileges and differences inherited by her american upbringing, and she approaches turkey with a mixed bag of emotions. at times she's exasperated by it, at times it awes her, at times childhood nostalgia rears its head, at times her clinging relatives produce in her an equal and opposite need to flee. in other words, for me, a good novel is one that embraces the fluctuations, the nuances, the permeability of feeling. there is and can be sentimentality, but it isn't total and it isn't unending. most of all, it doesn't result in an uncritical valorization of the nation-state and it doesn't exist so our main character can sit and wallow about everything they'll never understand about their parents' culture or language.
selin, the anti-diaspora diaspora kid, gets up and throws herself headfirst into the so-called "unknowable." she, unlike many of her literary counterparts, is not so passive or one-note with her pity parties. also, she gets on antidepressants, which is cool to see.
in either/or, i felt like i finally began to pick up on batuman's predilections and craft habits. what initially enthralled me in the idiot i recognized here as a few of her more prominent weaknesses. she struggles with her transitions, and moving from one sequence to the next can be—at times—clunky. her scene-writing, in short, vignette-like bursts, is exceptional, but during longer moments, you can feel her straining. the register she uses for early kiss/sex scenes wobbles, torn between selin's requisite intellectual remoteness and the more common tender or sensory language we're used to seeing in literature where teenage girls have to consider what it means to be a virgin (or to no longer be one). i can imagine batuman going back and forth about her prose in those moments, since intellectual monologues are her bread and butter, while extensive gesture writing is something she doesn't appear to enjoy—and is not necessarily great at.
i thought i would be pleased by how little of ivan there was in this, but it seemed he acted as an integral emotional anchor in the idiot and without that linchpin here, the direction of the novel felt a lot more unstable and confused (it only now occurs to me how quickly ivan's ex-girlfriend disappeared into the ether towards the beginning?).
we get a bit of an ivan replacement (the guy is so uninteresting that i can't even recall his name or selin's funny moniker for him), but in either/or it's more obvious than ever that batuman's male characters are a lot less compelling than her women. maybe that's the point here, given the high volume of sex being had (badly and on purpose). i wanted more svetlana (SO much more!!!!), and i missed the absurdity and humor of the batuman boys of yore—before we had to think about the fact that most of them are being absurd and humorous solely to get into women's pants.
the sex writing in this was incredibly difficult to get through, so kudos to batuman for replicating the horrors and humiliations of awkward, fumbling college depravity. i can't wait until selin discovers that sex does NOT have to be painful or pointless.
i loved and was ready for a turkey jaunt towards the end (a la european jaunt in the idiot), and then i had to cope with the fact that it would involve more badly had sex......but for a brief, sparkling moment, the cousins and grandmothers were a boon!!!!!! not a bad follow-up, but not extraordinarily good either. i can only hope the third installment will re-up the charms of the first. 3.7/5, some laughs were had, though not nearly enough, and all the men in this were a drag and a bore. it is eerie how good batuman is at writing about/towards the primal dread men can and do incite in the body when sex is on the table.
sure, you could argue she's also guilty of navel-gazing, but her navel-gazing is reminiscent of someone widely read and deeply fascinated by language and culture. in other words, selin and her presumed self-importance are at the center of this series, but so too is selin's love of literature, linguistics, politics, humor, friendship, professors, romance, sex, travel, alcohol, parties, creative writing, and on and on into a beautiful intertextual limbo.....
julio cortázar put it best: “The novel wins by points, the short story by knockout." this is a phenomenon batuman is well aware of, and one she gleefully exploits in her novels. it's a habit i am very fond of in fiction: self-indulgence beyond the self, by which i mean, beyond the personal experiences of the self and its so-called ties to any given nation-state.
i like how paul laity articulated this impulse in an old guardian interview with batuman:
A decade ago, Batuman wrote a polemic against the crafted, controlled fiction that was coming out of creative writing courses. Literature, she insisted, should encompass “all the irrelevant garbage” of life. “American writers, break out of the jail!” the essay concluded: “Write long novels, pointless novels. Do not be ashamed to grieve about personal things.” Though the literary landscape has since changed, it seems unlikely that Batuman will ever write a novel that isn’t also a set of thoughts about what fiction can or should be.
when i'm reading the newest wave of auto-fictitious diaspora lit, i understand the impulse to long for a/the nation-state, but it still makes me want to roll my eyes.
in the world of the idiot, selin recognizes and routinely interrogates the privileges and differences inherited by her american upbringing, and she approaches turkey with a mixed bag of emotions. at times she's exasperated by it, at times it awes her, at times childhood nostalgia rears its head, at times her clinging relatives produce in her an equal and opposite need to flee. in other words, for me, a good novel is one that embraces the fluctuations, the nuances, the permeability of feeling. there is and can be sentimentality, but it isn't total and it isn't unending. most of all, it doesn't result in an uncritical valorization of the nation-state and it doesn't exist so our main character can sit and wallow about everything they'll never understand about their parents' culture or language.
selin, the anti-diaspora diaspora kid, gets up and throws herself headfirst into the so-called "unknowable." she, unlike many of her literary counterparts, is not so passive or one-note with her pity parties. also, she gets on antidepressants, which is cool to see.
in either/or, i felt like i finally began to pick up on batuman's predilections and craft habits. what initially enthralled me in the idiot i recognized here as a few of her more prominent weaknesses. she struggles with her transitions, and moving from one sequence to the next can be—at times—clunky. her scene-writing, in short, vignette-like bursts, is exceptional, but during longer moments, you can feel her straining. the register she uses for early kiss/sex scenes wobbles, torn between selin's requisite intellectual remoteness and the more common tender or sensory language we're used to seeing in literature where teenage girls have to consider what it means to be a virgin (or to no longer be one). i can imagine batuman going back and forth about her prose in those moments, since intellectual monologues are her bread and butter, while extensive gesture writing is something she doesn't appear to enjoy—and is not necessarily great at.
i thought i would be pleased by how little of ivan there was in this, but it seemed he acted as an integral emotional anchor in the idiot and without that linchpin here, the direction of the novel felt a lot more unstable and confused (it only now occurs to me how quickly ivan's ex-girlfriend disappeared into the ether towards the beginning?).
we get a bit of an ivan replacement (the guy is so uninteresting that i can't even recall his name or selin's funny moniker for him), but in either/or it's more obvious than ever that batuman's male characters are a lot less compelling than her women. maybe that's the point here, given the high volume of sex being had (badly and on purpose). i wanted more svetlana (SO much more!!!!), and i missed the absurdity and humor of the batuman boys of yore—before we had to think about the fact that most of them are being absurd and humorous solely to get into women's pants.
the sex writing in this was incredibly difficult to get through, so kudos to batuman for replicating the horrors and humiliations of awkward, fumbling college depravity. i can't wait until selin discovers that sex does NOT have to be painful or pointless.
i loved and was ready for a turkey jaunt towards the end (a la european jaunt in the idiot), and then i had to cope with the fact that it would involve more badly had sex......but for a brief, sparkling moment, the cousins and grandmothers were a boon!!!!!! not a bad follow-up, but not extraordinarily good either. i can only hope the third installment will re-up the charms of the first. 3.7/5, some laughs were had, though not nearly enough, and all the men in this were a drag and a bore. it is eerie how good batuman is at writing about/towards the primal dread men can and do incite in the body when sex is on the table.
June 14, 2024
3.5
Batuman has one of the most uniquely enjoyable voices for her character, Selin, in both this and The Idiot. She’s one of the funniest authors I’ve read. A lot of the humor comes from Selin’s constant commentary on her own behavior, juxtaposing an awareness beyond her years with an inability to be anything but a teen.
If you’ve read The Idiot, this one picks up RIGHT where we left off, and like many sequels, felt like diminishing returns. On the other hand, I enjoyed spending time with Selin so much in The Idiot, that I had to control myself from picking this one up immediately after, so I could wait for my wonderful buddy, Charles. Charles went into this without having read the first one, and it was great to see it through his fresh experience as I was reading. I could see how reading these in the reverse order could work well for a reader, first introduced to such a smart, funny, lost-but-strong and likable character, and then getting more of a plot to lead you through in the first. But if you need order, the order is clear, and I can’t help wondering from the ending of this one if Batuman will bless us with a third.
Selin is a student at Harvard, an American with strong family ties to Turkey. In the first, she visits Hungary, and I very much enjoyed the comparisons and bits of history as Selin works things out. In this one, she returns to Turkey as a writer of a travel guide that focuses away from the beaten path. We get to see her with her Grandmother, and we see her navigate the advances of strange men. There’s lots here about culture, privilege, and womanhood, all through the eyes of a whip-smart innocent. If you like a good coming of age novel, there’s so much to appreciate here: lots of great observations and laugh-out-loud musings, lots of hurt, helplessness, self-loathing, joy, celebrations, new adventures, and interesting friends. It does lack plot. Now, I must confess that at the start I was simultaneously reading Kevin Wilson’s, Now is Not the Time to Panic, which moves like a freight train, so by comparison this felt more like fragmented thoughts (and interesting to me, this was way funnier, even though I also enjoy Wilson’s humor). All that said, I hope she does write a third book about Selin—after all, Selin is just getting started.
Batuman has one of the most uniquely enjoyable voices for her character, Selin, in both this and The Idiot. She’s one of the funniest authors I’ve read. A lot of the humor comes from Selin’s constant commentary on her own behavior, juxtaposing an awareness beyond her years with an inability to be anything but a teen.
If you’ve read The Idiot, this one picks up RIGHT where we left off, and like many sequels, felt like diminishing returns. On the other hand, I enjoyed spending time with Selin so much in The Idiot, that I had to control myself from picking this one up immediately after, so I could wait for my wonderful buddy, Charles. Charles went into this without having read the first one, and it was great to see it through his fresh experience as I was reading. I could see how reading these in the reverse order could work well for a reader, first introduced to such a smart, funny, lost-but-strong and likable character, and then getting more of a plot to lead you through in the first. But if you need order, the order is clear, and I can’t help wondering from the ending of this one if Batuman will bless us with a third.
Selin is a student at Harvard, an American with strong family ties to Turkey. In the first, she visits Hungary, and I very much enjoyed the comparisons and bits of history as Selin works things out. In this one, she returns to Turkey as a writer of a travel guide that focuses away from the beaten path. We get to see her with her Grandmother, and we see her navigate the advances of strange men. There’s lots here about culture, privilege, and womanhood, all through the eyes of a whip-smart innocent. If you like a good coming of age novel, there’s so much to appreciate here: lots of great observations and laugh-out-loud musings, lots of hurt, helplessness, self-loathing, joy, celebrations, new adventures, and interesting friends. It does lack plot. Now, I must confess that at the start I was simultaneously reading Kevin Wilson’s, Now is Not the Time to Panic, which moves like a freight train, so by comparison this felt more like fragmented thoughts (and interesting to me, this was way funnier, even though I also enjoy Wilson’s humor). All that said, I hope she does write a third book about Selin—after all, Selin is just getting started.
August 1, 2022
RTC when I have time, but I am speechless with awe. Batuman's mind is ceaselessly unique and fascinating and she is just so funny! The section of the book in Turkey broke my heart, getting inside a young woman's mind and seeing her perception of her own agency, and tapping back into those feelings was painful but profound.
Okay, it is time for the official review! (It is late and I am mildly buzzed, but I will do my best.) I loved Batuman's first novel, The Idiot, when I read it. It was (is) one of the smartest and most honest novels I have ever read and I will say the same for Either/Or. Both books are clearly strongly autobiographical, and follow the life of a high achieving and brilliant Harvard student named Selin (this book is set in 1995, Selin's Sophomore year.) It is not a coincidence that the first book is named after Dostoyevsky's novel, and the action follows Fyodor's story and this book is named after Kierkegaard's treatise and as did Soren, Selin asks herself questions about the aesthetic vs. the ethical life. Simply put, she is asking herself how she wants to/should live.
Selin is the child of Turkish immigrants. Intellectually she is light years beyond most anyone of any age, but when it comes to integrations with humans Selin is stunningly awkward and hampered by her overanalysis of everything from kissing, to language, to parties, to small talk. Following Selin through her analyses is often flat-out hilarious, sometimes heart-breaking, sometimes frustrating, but without fail it is fascinating. In this book I particularly loved her analyses of books. My particular favorites were her observations about Eugene Onegin, Madame Bovary, and Portrait of a Lady, but there are many others.
Selin is, to put it mildly, a late bloomer. At 19 she has never been kissed. In fact Selin really doesn't seem interested in bonding so much as she is interested in having a dramatic novelistic relationship and is not so much interested in having sex as she is eager to find out why her friends are suddenly so focused on their sexual relationships. It is research. An interesting thing happens to Selin and to her friends. These brilliant young women, so sure of their minds, seem to lose all sense of agency with respect to their bodies and sexuality once they become sexually active. It is as if once they have given up the v-card their bodies belong to all men. For Selin there is the added complication that she feels she needs to have a logical non-discriminatory reason for saying no. I mentioned that it can be heartbreaking to ride alongside Selin, and for me that was never more true than in her sexual dealings with men. This was also true of her unrequited romantic pursuit of the relentlessly terrible gaslighting Ivan which began in the Idiot and which continued a bit in this book. Ivan has moved across the country to Berkeley. Communication between Ivan and Selin is limited to occasional email and university private messaging (this was 1995, no texting or general IM's or social.) I should note here that a good chunk of the book covers a week by week report on the start of Selin's school year when she has just returned from her summer travels in pursuit of Ivan and then the next section is "The Rest of Fall Semester" and then Spring and Summer. The pacing makes sense as Selin's development plods along in the first weeks of continued Ivan obsession and good classes, then moves to a "who cares" period of depression (her observations on therapy were some of my favorite passages), and then races as Selin finds medication that works, and moves on (slowwwwly) from Ivan. From there Selin Selin makes surprising, sometimes utterly unanalyzed, choices and explores the broader questions of how men see her and to how hetero relationships and happily-ever-after compulsions change women and women's friendships and intellectual lives. This funny and smart woman is a mess when it comes to boys, as are her friends, and as I recall as are most 19 year-olds. But Selin, unlike most girls, is asking "why" with respect to many aspects of pairing off and any future based on marriage. For me at first these questions seemed childish, but when I thought about them I realized they were not childish at all. I was so hard-wired not to question things, to accept them as the way of things, that any analytical approach seemed silly when in fact those questions were brave and right.
Unlike in The Idiot, in which Selin follows vile Ivan to Hungary, this book does not predominantly focus on a single relationship. There are a number of boys and men. As important are Selin's shifting relationships with her women friends, the beautiful, smart and eating disordered Svetlana, the beautiful, smart Priya who lives in a fantasy world of possibility, and the mans' woman Riley, who finally decides she is not just one-of-the guys. All of those relationships are impacted by the pursuit of boys, but they exist independent of that at as well, and it is interesting to watch that.
In both this book and The Idiot our experience is curated by Selin. We only get one point of view. I felt like this was a bit limiting in The Idiot -- Selin made herself so flat, no matter what happened everything came down to getting Ivan to want her. This book was less limiting. We are still seeing everything from Selin's perspective, but here there is change and movement, and multiple goals. I loved Selin here, and did not always love her in the last book. And Selin really has grown since The Idiot, and she has become much more diverting and much funnier. I do think this book really illuminates The Idiot, and I recommend reading them in order and not starting with this just as one would not start Remembrance of Things Past with volume 4. I do not think I have ever read a book or series of books that so clearly shows how we move from childhood to adulthood, and I have rarely read anything so funny and smart and true.
Okay, it is time for the official review! (It is late and I am mildly buzzed, but I will do my best.) I loved Batuman's first novel, The Idiot, when I read it. It was (is) one of the smartest and most honest novels I have ever read and I will say the same for Either/Or. Both books are clearly strongly autobiographical, and follow the life of a high achieving and brilliant Harvard student named Selin (this book is set in 1995, Selin's Sophomore year.) It is not a coincidence that the first book is named after Dostoyevsky's novel, and the action follows Fyodor's story and this book is named after Kierkegaard's treatise and as did Soren, Selin asks herself questions about the aesthetic vs. the ethical life. Simply put, she is asking herself how she wants to/should live.
Selin is the child of Turkish immigrants. Intellectually she is light years beyond most anyone of any age, but when it comes to integrations with humans Selin is stunningly awkward and hampered by her overanalysis of everything from kissing, to language, to parties, to small talk. Following Selin through her analyses is often flat-out hilarious, sometimes heart-breaking, sometimes frustrating, but without fail it is fascinating. In this book I particularly loved her analyses of books. My particular favorites were her observations about Eugene Onegin, Madame Bovary, and Portrait of a Lady, but there are many others.
Selin is, to put it mildly, a late bloomer. At 19 she has never been kissed. In fact Selin really doesn't seem interested in bonding so much as she is interested in having a dramatic novelistic relationship and is not so much interested in having sex as she is eager to find out why her friends are suddenly so focused on their sexual relationships. It is research. An interesting thing happens to Selin and to her friends. These brilliant young women, so sure of their minds, seem to lose all sense of agency with respect to their bodies and sexuality once they become sexually active. It is as if once they have given up the v-card their bodies belong to all men. For Selin there is the added complication that she feels she needs to have a logical non-discriminatory reason for saying no. I mentioned that it can be heartbreaking to ride alongside Selin, and for me that was never more true than in her sexual dealings with men. This was also true of her unrequited romantic pursuit of the relentlessly terrible gaslighting Ivan which began in the Idiot and which continued a bit in this book. Ivan has moved across the country to Berkeley. Communication between Ivan and Selin is limited to occasional email and university private messaging (this was 1995, no texting or general IM's or social.) I should note here that a good chunk of the book covers a week by week report on the start of Selin's school year when she has just returned from her summer travels in pursuit of Ivan and then the next section is "The Rest of Fall Semester" and then Spring and Summer. The pacing makes sense as Selin's development plods along in the first weeks of continued Ivan obsession and good classes, then moves to a "who cares" period of depression (her observations on therapy were some of my favorite passages), and then races as Selin finds medication that works, and moves on (slowwwwly) from Ivan. From there Selin Selin makes surprising, sometimes utterly unanalyzed, choices and explores the broader questions of how men see her and to how hetero relationships and happily-ever-after compulsions change women and women's friendships and intellectual lives. This funny and smart woman is a mess when it comes to boys, as are her friends, and as I recall as are most 19 year-olds. But Selin, unlike most girls, is asking "why" with respect to many aspects of pairing off and any future based on marriage. For me at first these questions seemed childish, but when I thought about them I realized they were not childish at all. I was so hard-wired not to question things, to accept them as the way of things, that any analytical approach seemed silly when in fact those questions were brave and right.
Unlike in The Idiot, in which Selin follows vile Ivan to Hungary, this book does not predominantly focus on a single relationship. There are a number of boys and men. As important are Selin's shifting relationships with her women friends, the beautiful, smart and eating disordered Svetlana, the beautiful, smart Priya who lives in a fantasy world of possibility, and the mans' woman Riley, who finally decides she is not just one-of-the guys. All of those relationships are impacted by the pursuit of boys, but they exist independent of that at as well, and it is interesting to watch that.
In both this book and The Idiot our experience is curated by Selin. We only get one point of view. I felt like this was a bit limiting in The Idiot -- Selin made herself so flat, no matter what happened everything came down to getting Ivan to want her. This book was less limiting. We are still seeing everything from Selin's perspective, but here there is change and movement, and multiple goals. I loved Selin here, and did not always love her in the last book. And Selin really has grown since The Idiot, and she has become much more diverting and much funnier. I do think this book really illuminates The Idiot, and I recommend reading them in order and not starting with this just as one would not start Remembrance of Things Past with volume 4. I do not think I have ever read a book or series of books that so clearly shows how we move from childhood to adulthood, and I have rarely read anything so funny and smart and true.
May 27, 2022
the first sequel better than the first book since catching fire
June 8, 2022
Thoroughly incredible
June 15, 2024
I did the unthinkable and walked into Either/Or cold. That is to say, I went into this story totally ignorant of what had gone on in The Idiot, first. You know what? It didn’t matter. This amazing book didn’t mind, and never punished me for my whim. In fact, it greeted me with open arms, and gave me everything I needed to follow.
It helps, of course, that our narrator, Selin, proved fond of rehashing a love story that never was, which The Idiot had apparently featured.
As it turns out, Selin runs an often clever, sometimes astoundingly candid internal monologue about everything around her and everything that she feels, including anxiety towards her haunting would-be breakup. In Either/Or, she is slowly growing out of her teenage years, and dorm life in the second half of the 90s has songs like Criminal by Fiona Apple occasionally playing in the background. The budding email system Selin uses on campus, just like the choice of a soundtrack, drove the settings right home for me.
She may be smart as a whip—and her witty reflections truly run the gamut of topics fit and unfit for mid-90s students—but Selin is also a lonely girl, awkward in her social forays; a tender dork, as well as a young heart waiting to be taken. Batuman wrote a beautiful, vulnerable character in Selin, gave her all the room and the vocabulary to shine, and set a tone that was fit for the times, a tone that felt right from the get-go. As Selin’s reflections went on—about her Turkish heritage, about literary classics, about sexuality, about various friends and family members—my love for her could only expand.
Eventually, I still grew antsy for some action, as dorm-related antics were getting stale, but my wish was soon granted: past the midway point, a trip overseas fabulously rekindled a fire anew.
Thanks to my friend Jennifer for marveling at Selin’s incredible voice with me, as we went along this buddy read. And yes, I will read The Idiot, one day.
It helps, of course, that our narrator, Selin, proved fond of rehashing a love story that never was, which The Idiot had apparently featured.
As it turns out, Selin runs an often clever, sometimes astoundingly candid internal monologue about everything around her and everything that she feels, including anxiety towards her haunting would-be breakup. In Either/Or, she is slowly growing out of her teenage years, and dorm life in the second half of the 90s has songs like Criminal by Fiona Apple occasionally playing in the background. The budding email system Selin uses on campus, just like the choice of a soundtrack, drove the settings right home for me.
She may be smart as a whip—and her witty reflections truly run the gamut of topics fit and unfit for mid-90s students—but Selin is also a lonely girl, awkward in her social forays; a tender dork, as well as a young heart waiting to be taken. Batuman wrote a beautiful, vulnerable character in Selin, gave her all the room and the vocabulary to shine, and set a tone that was fit for the times, a tone that felt right from the get-go. As Selin’s reflections went on—about her Turkish heritage, about literary classics, about sexuality, about various friends and family members—my love for her could only expand.
Eventually, I still grew antsy for some action, as dorm-related antics were getting stale, but my wish was soon granted: past the midway point, a trip overseas fabulously rekindled a fire anew.
Thanks to my friend Jennifer for marveling at Selin’s incredible voice with me, as we went along this buddy read. And yes, I will read The Idiot, one day.
October 4, 2025
While my annotations for The Idiot by Elif Batuman were filled with thick underlines, stars, and hearts, my annotations for Either/Or by Elif Batuman were filled with mostly questions.
These questions left me feeling slightly distressed, and, at times, the ambiguity in Batuman's seemingly simple writing made me want to pull my hair out.
And yet, I am indebted to this book.
Batuman writes in a sotto voce way, as if not to be heard by anyone who isn't reading her story. She writes as if this novel was her journal. It is private, quiet, and often speculative.
But there is more to it.
If Batuman only wrote the novel as if it was her journal, I don't think I would've been as captivated.
By the end of the book, it dawned on me that I could better understand Batuman's writing if I saw it through the lens of a new version of Afro-Surrealism.
Before I explain why, this book, of course, is NOT an Afro-Surrealist work. Elif Batuman is not Black.
Either/Or does not fall into the same category as Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, Beloved by Toni Morrison, Ark of Bones and Other Stories by Henry Dumas, the show Atlanta produced by Donald Glover (and others), etc.
Still, I cannot help but draw on ideas from Afro-Surrealism to better analyze this novel.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe it was the author of Afro-Surreal Manifesto by D. Scot Miller who said, "Afro-Surreal presupposes that beyond this visible world, there is an invisible world striving to manifest, and it is our job to uncover it."
And, in this sense, if Afro-Surrrealism presumes an invisible world that only Black people experience and thus uncover, there must be other types of surrealisms that exist for people with other marginalized identities.
These different surrealisms wouldn't produce the same invisible worlds, but these surrealisms may produce worlds for people with marginalized identities that are "mystical and metaphorical" rather than "empirical."
As a woman who often wonders if I am actually non-binary, and as a lesbian, I certainly feel some sort of Queer-Surrealism play out in my life.
And for the main character Selin, it seems that her Turkish-American and/or American-Turkish identity, as well as her identify as a woman, molds the novel into a cultural-surrealist work intertwined with themes of orientalism and sexism.
This cultural-surrealism affects what Selin sees in the world, and what the world sees in Selin:
"It had, I realized, been a real disappointment to get to Turkey and to discover that my name and appearance still required constant explanation---maybe even more so in America. People heard my accent, and saw what I was wearing, and doing, and it didn't make sense, or fit with my ID card" (pg. 330).
The beautiful thing about this book is that as Selin uncovers more of her "invisible world," and embraces that she sees the world differently because of her positionality, whether that means her privilege, her Turkish heritage, or her gender identity, she becomes more honest with herself.
And from this honesty, I believe she becomes more conscious of who she is.
In the beginning of the book, she is flinging her thoughts around, and most of them are hard for the reader to catch. There is not much pause on one thought.
She seems to question, then focus her attention back to her environment.
But as time goes on, it seems to me that Selin begins to turn inwards to ask herself why she is having the thoughts that she is having, and to what extent are they her, and to what extent are they her environment?
It was one of my core beliefs that real worth was independent of what some Europeans or American people happened to have heard of. And yet...what was value, if it wasn't conferred by some people? A daunting thought: How would I eventually root out from my mind all the beliefs that I hated?" (pg. 292)
Selin doesn't want to be eurocentric. She doesn't want to hold onto white-supremacist ideals. And yet, she is not shielded from the everyday consumption of these ideals, which have thus still left an imprint on her frame of thinking.
And she knows this. Luckily, you will see that Selin's mind and frame of thinking are not rigid. She may not be able to control what she consumes, but she can control who she decides to be.
These questions left me feeling slightly distressed, and, at times, the ambiguity in Batuman's seemingly simple writing made me want to pull my hair out.
And yet, I am indebted to this book.
Batuman writes in a sotto voce way, as if not to be heard by anyone who isn't reading her story. She writes as if this novel was her journal. It is private, quiet, and often speculative.
But there is more to it.
If Batuman only wrote the novel as if it was her journal, I don't think I would've been as captivated.
By the end of the book, it dawned on me that I could better understand Batuman's writing if I saw it through the lens of a new version of Afro-Surrealism.
Before I explain why, this book, of course, is NOT an Afro-Surrealist work. Elif Batuman is not Black.
Either/Or does not fall into the same category as Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, Beloved by Toni Morrison, Ark of Bones and Other Stories by Henry Dumas, the show Atlanta produced by Donald Glover (and others), etc.
Still, I cannot help but draw on ideas from Afro-Surrealism to better analyze this novel.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe it was the author of Afro-Surreal Manifesto by D. Scot Miller who said, "Afro-Surreal presupposes that beyond this visible world, there is an invisible world striving to manifest, and it is our job to uncover it."
And, in this sense, if Afro-Surrrealism presumes an invisible world that only Black people experience and thus uncover, there must be other types of surrealisms that exist for people with other marginalized identities.
These different surrealisms wouldn't produce the same invisible worlds, but these surrealisms may produce worlds for people with marginalized identities that are "mystical and metaphorical" rather than "empirical."
As a woman who often wonders if I am actually non-binary, and as a lesbian, I certainly feel some sort of Queer-Surrealism play out in my life.
And for the main character Selin, it seems that her Turkish-American and/or American-Turkish identity, as well as her identify as a woman, molds the novel into a cultural-surrealist work intertwined with themes of orientalism and sexism.
This cultural-surrealism affects what Selin sees in the world, and what the world sees in Selin:
"It had, I realized, been a real disappointment to get to Turkey and to discover that my name and appearance still required constant explanation---maybe even more so in America. People heard my accent, and saw what I was wearing, and doing, and it didn't make sense, or fit with my ID card" (pg. 330).
The beautiful thing about this book is that as Selin uncovers more of her "invisible world," and embraces that she sees the world differently because of her positionality, whether that means her privilege, her Turkish heritage, or her gender identity, she becomes more honest with herself.
And from this honesty, I believe she becomes more conscious of who she is.
In the beginning of the book, she is flinging her thoughts around, and most of them are hard for the reader to catch. There is not much pause on one thought.
She seems to question, then focus her attention back to her environment.
But as time goes on, it seems to me that Selin begins to turn inwards to ask herself why she is having the thoughts that she is having, and to what extent are they her, and to what extent are they her environment?
It was one of my core beliefs that real worth was independent of what some Europeans or American people happened to have heard of. And yet...what was value, if it wasn't conferred by some people? A daunting thought: How would I eventually root out from my mind all the beliefs that I hated?" (pg. 292)
Selin doesn't want to be eurocentric. She doesn't want to hold onto white-supremacist ideals. And yet, she is not shielded from the everyday consumption of these ideals, which have thus still left an imprint on her frame of thinking.
And she knows this. Luckily, you will see that Selin's mind and frame of thinking are not rigid. She may not be able to control what she consumes, but she can control who she decides to be.
May 27, 2022
I’ll start off by admitting that The Idiot is one of my all-time favorite books: the impact it had on me when I first read it in 2018 cannot be overstated. After I finished it the first time, I flipped to the beginning and immediately re-read it, loving it just as much the second time. I quoted it relentlessly in my journal, feeling that somehow Elif Batuman had articulated so many things I had felt but never knew how to say. This being the case, I had high hopes for the sequel, Either/Or. I tried not to be unreasonable in my expectations but still—it’s hard to live up to my own personal hype around The Idiot.
Unfortunately I was pretty disappointed by Either/Or. While I think Batuman did a remarkable job recreating and continuing Selin’s voice, the format of the novel felt so clunky to me. Selin’s sophomore year plays out in short vignettes that I found clumsy and unsatisfying; there were many fascinating, amusing, and relatable ideas that never fully developed. Selin’s observations and questions fell flat, reading more like disjointed glimpses into someone’s life rather than the interconnected parts of a delightfully meandering narrative. The story just didn’t come together for me. Also, what ever happened to Svetlana? Is she still dating that boring guy? What about Ivan? And his ex-girlfriend, Zita? What about Selin’s mother and her cancer? I feel like so many plot points and characters were picked up then promptly abandoned.
All of this is not to say that there were no redeeming parts to the book. Selin is still her intelligent and charming self, occasionally tossing out an observation so luminous that it stopped me in my tracks and made me stare into space for a while. She is still wondering how a person—more specifically, a writer—lives a worthwhile life. In particular, her musings about sex interested me: “Was it sex—‘having’ sex—that would restore to me the sense of my life as a story?” And: “It went on like that all day: the previous night replaying over and over, seeming to confer a kind of weighted legitimacy onto all of the routine, boring parts of the day, making me feel like I was in a movie.” These passages resonated with me and for that reason made the book feel worthwhile. But that brings me to a troubling question, similar to questions that Selin herself struggles with: why do I want to see myself in the fictional characters I read about? Isn’t it faulty to measure a novel in part by how much it reflects back to me my own life? Maybe it’s more valuable than I realize that the novel makes me consider these kinds of questions. I guess I’ll end by saying that I’m suspicious of myself as a reader, and that I leave myself open to the possibility that Either/Or will grow on me with time.
Unfortunately I was pretty disappointed by Either/Or. While I think Batuman did a remarkable job recreating and continuing Selin’s voice, the format of the novel felt so clunky to me. Selin’s sophomore year plays out in short vignettes that I found clumsy and unsatisfying; there were many fascinating, amusing, and relatable ideas that never fully developed. Selin’s observations and questions fell flat, reading more like disjointed glimpses into someone’s life rather than the interconnected parts of a delightfully meandering narrative. The story just didn’t come together for me. Also, what ever happened to Svetlana? Is she still dating that boring guy? What about Ivan? And his ex-girlfriend, Zita? What about Selin’s mother and her cancer? I feel like so many plot points and characters were picked up then promptly abandoned.
All of this is not to say that there were no redeeming parts to the book. Selin is still her intelligent and charming self, occasionally tossing out an observation so luminous that it stopped me in my tracks and made me stare into space for a while. She is still wondering how a person—more specifically, a writer—lives a worthwhile life. In particular, her musings about sex interested me: “Was it sex—‘having’ sex—that would restore to me the sense of my life as a story?” And: “It went on like that all day: the previous night replaying over and over, seeming to confer a kind of weighted legitimacy onto all of the routine, boring parts of the day, making me feel like I was in a movie.” These passages resonated with me and for that reason made the book feel worthwhile. But that brings me to a troubling question, similar to questions that Selin herself struggles with: why do I want to see myself in the fictional characters I read about? Isn’t it faulty to measure a novel in part by how much it reflects back to me my own life? Maybe it’s more valuable than I realize that the novel makes me consider these kinds of questions. I guess I’ll end by saying that I’m suspicious of myself as a reader, and that I leave myself open to the possibility that Either/Or will grow on me with time.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 2, 2022
elif batuman if you're reading this i am free on thursday night and would like to hang out. please respond to this and then hang out with me on thursday night when i'm free
June 20, 2022
Thanks to Penguin Press for an ARC of “Either/Or” by genius Author Elif Batuman. 📚 ❤️
This is literally a book you love reading every precious page, satisfyingly finish, and want to immediately read again. The huge number of books (many you’ll instantly recognize and nod your head) and music it references as we tumble deliciously through Selin’s second year at Harvest in this sequel is both witty and so overtly relatable. Selin reminds me of myself studying abroad in London my sophomore year as a rambling 19-year-old, and I just devoured this book. Fingers crossed for Part 3: Selin as a Junior at Harvard!!!
This is literally a book you love reading every precious page, satisfyingly finish, and want to immediately read again. The huge number of books (many you’ll instantly recognize and nod your head) and music it references as we tumble deliciously through Selin’s second year at Harvest in this sequel is both witty and so overtly relatable. Selin reminds me of myself studying abroad in London my sophomore year as a rambling 19-year-old, and I just devoured this book. Fingers crossed for Part 3: Selin as a Junior at Harvard!!!
October 13, 2025
There’s something quietly magnetic about this book — a kind of intellectual intimacy that sneaks up on you. It doesn’t scream for attention, but it lingers in your thoughts long after you close it.
Selin’s voice feels like a mirror — awkward, brilliant, endlessly observant — capturing that strange threshold between youth and self-awareness, between theory and living.
I loved how Batuman turns philosophy into emotion, and emotion into narrative — how reading Kierkegaard can suddenly feel like falling in love, or trying to understand your own contradictions.
It was a good read — not in a casual sense, but in that rare, subtle way when a book quietly rearranges your inner dialogue.
— Phoenix Perpetuale
Selin’s voice feels like a mirror — awkward, brilliant, endlessly observant — capturing that strange threshold between youth and self-awareness, between theory and living.
I loved how Batuman turns philosophy into emotion, and emotion into narrative — how reading Kierkegaard can suddenly feel like falling in love, or trying to understand your own contradictions.
It was a good read — not in a casual sense, but in that rare, subtle way when a book quietly rearranges your inner dialogue.
— Phoenix Perpetuale
February 22, 2022
In this book we follow Selin during her second year at Harvard and if you think this is going to be a story about a privileged, sometimes self-absorbed, naive, overthinker, artsy 19 year old Turkish-American girl who just wants to get laid, read sad Russian novels, obsess over some loser and listen to Fiona Apple, well... you are correct. And it's amazing. If you liked The Idiot you have to read this sequel because it's even better.
And if you're into book themed playlists, I made one with music mentioned in the book.
And if you're into book themed playlists, I made one with music mentioned in the book.
June 4, 2022
Il trasporto emotivo che ho sentito con Selin è al limite del patologico.
Il fluire libero dei suoi pensieri sulla carta, il passaggio sinuoso dalla filosofia, alla letteratura, all’antropologia, con quella curiosità analitica e spasmodica delle intelligenze più brillanti, ha sbloccato dei canali addormentati nella mia mente.
Nonostante la sua lentezza, il srotolarsi del gomitolo enciclopedico della testa di Selin senza una vera direzione se non quella dei mesi che scorrono, ti cattura per il magnetismo di un’interiorità ricchissima.
È finito troppo presto e non ne avevo abbastanza. Selin mi manca già ma sono molto orgogliosa di lei come se l’avessi tenuta per mano in questo viaggio.
Il fluire libero dei suoi pensieri sulla carta, il passaggio sinuoso dalla filosofia, alla letteratura, all’antropologia, con quella curiosità analitica e spasmodica delle intelligenze più brillanti, ha sbloccato dei canali addormentati nella mia mente.
Nonostante la sua lentezza, il srotolarsi del gomitolo enciclopedico della testa di Selin senza una vera direzione se non quella dei mesi che scorrono, ti cattura per il magnetismo di un’interiorità ricchissima.
È finito troppo presto e non ne avevo abbastanza. Selin mi manca già ma sono molto orgogliosa di lei come se l’avessi tenuta per mano in questo viaggio.
May 24, 2022
EDIT: I'm coming back to be a little less whiny than my initial review (which still stands, though it was a more visceral reaction than a measured one). Ultimately, there were things I did like, mostly the character of Selin. As mentioned below, she very much reminded me of that time of being 18/19, around other academically-minded and intelligent people and feeling as if I'd simultaneously found my place in the world and become extremely lost. Overthinking the slightest action and trying to make myself feel smarter by referencing/trying to relate to the most obscure literary/cultural references was part of that identity, so I really have a soft spot for Selin. However, I feel about this book how I feel when looking back at myself then: how annoying! It's only interesting to the person living it, which means Either/Or was a big old mess of "WHO CARES? GOOD GOD, GROW UP!" even though, you know, the only way to grow up is to wait for time to pass. In other words, this is a realistic book in many ways, but one that's tiresome (and that's being kind) to read. By all means, feel free to PM me spoilers if anything interesting happened in the last 40% because I just couldn't keep on trucking.
***
Right, I’m calling it a day. Made it to 62% before I just couldn’t soldier on anymore. I was only lukewarm on The Idiot but I can say with certainty that it did not need a sequel. Meandering, pretentious, plotless… I could go on. I actually really like Selin as she hilariously reminds me of myself when I left home and went off to college in NYC at 18 and felt like I was so smart and had so many deep thoughts even though I knew next to nothing. That being said, this was just dire. Random, no clear purpose, and something I dreaded picking up again every night. I only got so far into it because I wanted to see if anything was going to happen but eventually, I couldn’t do it anymore.
***
Right, I’m calling it a day. Made it to 62% before I just couldn’t soldier on anymore. I was only lukewarm on The Idiot but I can say with certainty that it did not need a sequel. Meandering, pretentious, plotless… I could go on. I actually really like Selin as she hilariously reminds me of myself when I left home and went off to college in NYC at 18 and felt like I was so smart and had so many deep thoughts even though I knew next to nothing. That being said, this was just dire. Random, no clear purpose, and something I dreaded picking up again every night. I only got so far into it because I wanted to see if anything was going to happen but eventually, I couldn’t do it anymore.
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