Book Reviews
Elif Batuman’s The Idiot follows Selin beginning her university adventure at Harvard. As a highly relatable coming-of-age novel, The Idiot emphasises the difficulties young adults face regarding finding new friends, falling in love, and feeling as if you’re not doing enough to achieve your dreams. It tackles these themes with humour, and I believe the story will connect with many readers on a personal level.
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Hot Milk by Deborah Levy primarily follows the relationship and journey of Sofia, a young anthropologist who has had to put her PhD on hold, and Rose, her mother who has an inability to use her legs properly. The two are in Spain to visit a specialist clinic run by Dr. Gomez in hopes to understand Rose’s peculiar health problems, and therefore one of the main themes that this novel discusses is illness. Moreover, it is somewhat a coming of age novel in how Sofia tries to form an identity separate from her mother’s.
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Sally Rooney’s Normal People is a novel that left me with mixed emotions. Whilst parts of it I appreciated, understood and enjoyed, there were also many aspects that made it a frustrating story to read.
At school Connell and Marianne pretend not to know each other. He’s popular and well-adjusted, star of the school soccer team while she is lonely, proud, and intensely private. But when Connell comes to pick his mother up from her housekeeping job at Marianne’s house, a strange and indelible connection grows between the two teenagers—one they are determined to conceal. A year later, they’re both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Marianne has found her feet in a new social world while Connell hangs at the sidelines, shy and uncertain. Throughout their years in college, Marianne and Connell circle one another, straying toward other people and possibilities but always magnetically, irresistibly drawn back together. Then, as she veers into self-destruction and he begins to search for meaning elsewhere, each must confront how far they are willing to go to save the other.
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Jenni Leigh Reads 