My Rating: 4 stars
"A portrait of the artist as a young woman." This first line from the book's summary is spot on!
The young woman in this instance is Selin, an 18-year-old Turkish-American entering her first year of studies at Harvard. The book starts off with Selin standing in line during first day orientation on campus, waiting to get her new email address, a free dictionary, and an abundance of "printed material" that, as far as she was concerned, really were not worth standing around in long lines for. From there, the book goes on to chronicle pretty much every aspect of Selin's college life – from finding her dorm room and meeting her new roommates (who are polar opposites in every sense of the word) and then agreeing to disagree on how best to "decorate" their new shared quarters, to taking placement tests and signing up for classes in subjects that she (and no one else for that matter) had ever heard of (i.e. Constructed Worlds), taught by eccentric professors who come off as pretentious and self-absorbed, to subsequently meeting and befriending an internationally diverse group of classmates (i.e. Hannah from Korea, Svetlana from Serbia, Ivan from Hungary, twins Kevin and Sandy from China, etc.). This is basically the pattern throughout the entire book. Nothing much happens -- there are no profound revelations, no exciting story arcs, plot points, or anything of that nature. Rather, this book talks a lot about the mundane, day-to-day experiences that Selin encounters and through her own narration, we essentially accompany Selin on her "journey" of self-discovery as she recounts how these experiences help her learn more about herself.
This book was very different from most of the other books I've read with a "coming of age" theme in that the story was told in a subtly sarcastic yet humorous way. I don't like books that try too hard to be funny, so thankfully this one was not like that at all. Selin as the narrator relays her story with a deadpan humor aspect to it that makes some of the things she says and does extremely funny without meaning to be (for example: the whole "controversy" over putting up a poster of Albert Einstein in Selin's dorm room was hilarious). It's been awhile since I've read a book that made me chuckle every couple pages!
What I loved most about the book was actually how much I was able to relate to Selin as a person. Her self-effacing personality, her indecisiveness in wanting to do certain things but ends up going the opposite direction due to overthinking things, her "doing what she is told" approach – reminded me a lot of how I was back during my own teenage years (and made me grateful for how I am now). I also found it interesting that the time period in which the story took place (the mid-1990s) mirrored my own college years as well! The nostalgia I felt with all the memories of my own college days definitely contributed to this book being such an enjoyable read for me.
With all that said though, I do agree with other reviewers that this book might not be for everyone. As much as I was able to relate to Selin, even I got annoyed at times when she would overthink some small thing for the umpteenth time (especially as it pertained to her relationship with her friend Ivan) and sometimes I felt like yelling at her to just "move on." Some parts of the book also went off on philosophical tangents that quite honestly were hard to follow. However, I was able to overlook these flaws (and a few others) due to the overall impact and relatability of the story.
Received advance reader's copy from Penguin Press via First-to-Read program
(Read in January/February 2017)
No comments:
Post a Comment