The Idiot

The Idiot’s protagonist, Selin, reminds me of a female version of the men Ottessa Moshfegh’s protagonist complains about in “My Year of Rest and Relaxation”: “(…) the truth was probably that they were afraid of vaginas, afraid they’d fail to understand one as pretty and pink as mine, and they were ashamed of their own inadequacies, afraid of their own dicks, afraid of themselves. So they focused on abstract ideas (…)”.

Selin is a smart girl who is afraid of many things, including conversing with her love interest, Ivan. She will spend her Summer in the Hungarian countryside because Ivan is Hungarian (they barely spend any time together, and she knew this would be the case when she made her decision; she just decided to go because he suggested it and she liked the idea of being “culturally closer” to him), but she is unable to have a conversation with him that is not meta, not camouflaged under multiple layers of abstraction. While she does not have a dick to be afraid of, the one reason she might not be afraid of her vagina is that she does not really seem to be aware of the fact she has one.

Selin is equal parts appealing and frustrating as a protagonist, and I enjoyed experiencing her witty stream of consciousness.