It’s 1995 and Selin, the daughter of Turkish immigrants, is starting her first year at Harvard studying Linguistics. She begins an email correspondence with a boy from her Russian class who is weird and pretentious (or maybe it’s just that he’s Hungarian). Batuman’s deadpan delivery and blasé attitude towards Harvard life brings levity to the heavy handed tasks of finding truth in language. The philosophical correspondences Selin and Ivan exchange seem purposefully sophomoric, ridiculous and full of hope, but Batuman isn’t poking fun so much as she is being nostalgic. She’s able to keep the feel of a Romantic Comedy while turning every convention of the RomCom on its head, all while dropping allusions to Dostoevsky and Proust along the way. I enjoyed it so much I went ahead and bought her follow up novel “Either/Or” which is a continuation of Selin’s story. I recommend for anyone who enjoys weird love stories or campus/study abroad novels.