This week features recommendations from Nora Hylton ’25, our wonderful Criticism Editor.
The Idiot
Summary: A spiraling presentation of the first year of college told from the perspective of Selin, a Turkish-American student at Harvard Univeristy. The novel follows the narrator as she rambles her way through making friends, struggling in classes, and becomes involved in a complex and intimate relationship with a senior math major in her Russian class. At certain points in the novel, I became suspicious that Elif Batuman had somehow gotten ahold of my own diary and was using it as inspiration for her plotlines. This book will make you feel less alone and less embarrassed about your first year of college, two things we all desperately need.
You will like this book if: You are inclined to painful and embarrassing crushes and/or are an idiot.
The Secret History
A group of the most pretentious college students ever commit a brutal crime because they think they’re more intelligent than everyone they know. Each character is frustrating, ridiculous, hateable and yet very compelling. You are only allowed to read this book if you understand what satire is.
You will like this book if: you are forced to interact with pretentious pricks at your pretentious Ivy League university and you secretly love it.
The End of Eddy
The End of Eddy is an autobiography by Edouard Louis, born Eddy Bellegueule, a gay man who grew up in the working class countryside of France. Edourard’s story exposes the homophobia, racism, and toxic masculinity prevelent in French culture, exasterbated by poverty and the negligence of the French government. The novel beautifully describes the experience of coming-of-age in an environment that is unsafe, and the sacrifices we must make to come into our identity.
You will like this book if: You’re a sucker for an amazing coming of age story and you hate the French.
