Esmé’s Reviews > The Idiot > Status Update

“But you aren’t really looking!” she exclaimed. “You are—” She flipped through her dictionary. “Wool, gathering!”
“That’s true,” I said. “I am woolgathering.”
“You are thinking about your friend,” she said. “That’s why you don’t want to listen to me.”
“But Rózsa. Don’t you ever like to . . . to do woolgathering?”
“No! I am not a dreamer!”

This Rózsa is rlly smth

“TOMORROW WE GO TO THE GREAT PLAIN.”

I think I get what’s bothering me. The tension and infatuation of first love that is making Selin so muted and seemingly unable to just be natural is familiar, but it’s familiar not to my 18 year old self but to my 13 year old self. This is very frustrating because I want her to be past this. I guess this is the problem of having read a more confident experienced Selin in Either/Or first. Sigh.

I’m not even halfway through, but somehow it’s already the end of the school year. The way Selin and Ivan are losing things to say is making me lose hope. Is it possible that no one has ever drawn Ivan Varga? I already know how to visualize Selin bc it’s just Elif, but I need some kind of reference point for a frizzyhaired bespectacled Hungarian math student that someone could be infatuated with. Poor Selin.