John Self is The Critic’s lead fiction critic. He lives in Belfast
‘‘I LOVED IT AND COULD HAVE read a thousand more pages of it,” said novelist Emma Cline of Elif Batuman’s debut novel The Idiot (2017). Well, Emma, will 350 pages do instead? My tone is aslant but my aim is true: Batuman’s new novel is a straight sequel to The Idiot, and your response to it will largely be predetermined by that fact.
First, a recap. Batuman made her name with (2010), one of those memoir-y non-fiction-y essayistic books that are even more all the rage now than they were then. A recollection of her study of Russian literature, blended with accounts of her Turkish family and its history, shone brightest when Batuman took up the cudgel against the creative writing teaching industry and the way it seemed to her to euthanise all genuine individuality in prose fiction in favour of the pseudo-individuality of
