It's rare to find a first novel that gets so much right . . . Lewycka is a seriously talented comic writer

More than just a jolly romp with political undertones is the way it captures the peculiar flavour of Eastern European immigrant life . . . a very rich mixture indeed, as well as very enjoyable reading

Funny, gritty, original ... one I adore

Remarkable, a lovely novel

An extraordinary read . . . nothing short of amazing. A rare treat, all too easy to gulp down in one greedy sitting

Outstanding

Extremely funny

Intelligent, lively, well written and compassionate

Ploughs a rich comic furrow

A clever, touching story

Mad and hilarious

Hilarious

A delightful first novel . . . an understanding of history, a profundity, and yet a lightness of touch, that are a joy... funny and touching

Hugely enjoyable . . . yields a golden harvest of family truths

Memorably inventive, unexpectedly moving

Wit, humour, sparkling dialogue, vivid characterization and generous spirit. Food for thought and a great read

Enthralling

Thought-provoking, uproariously funny, a comic feast. A riotous oil painting of senility, lust and greed

More than just a jolly romp with political undertones is the way it captures the peculiar flavour of Eastern European immigrant life . . . a very rich mixture indeed, as well as very enjoyable reading

A delightful first novel . . . an understanding of history, a profundity, and yet a lightness of touch, that are a joy . . . funny, touching and completely convincing

Absorbing… Serious without being solemn, sweet without being sickly, it’s an elegant tale about the unexpected places where kindness and sympathy can flourish and deepen.

Kennedy’s comedy is ruthlessly observed – an anti-romance that warms into something moving and profound. It’s also a brilliant portrait of city living.

Two lonely people go about their day in London in this typically Kennedian and utterly wonderful novel… but they find their way towards each other in an agonising love story that’s all about morality and decency in a careless world… Kennedy is a stand-up comedian, and observational comedy runs through this novel in interior monologues that are heartbreakingly familiar and laugh-out-loud sad. Her sentences are some of the best in modern fiction (there’s a springer spaniel called Hector with “black, bewildered ears… [that] made him look as if he’d recently heard dreadful news and still hadn’t adjusted.”) and reading her prose is like eating those fizzy sweets that are both sweet and sour make you wince at the back of your mouth – then go back for more… It’s gorgeous.

Consistently raw and powerful… emotionally exhausting… But there’s a lot to be said for a novel which sets so much store by “affection and tenderness”, and in which the emotional peaks and the possibilities of redemption and renewal are marked by the simple holding of hands.

Sweetly funny, The Idiot rejects the doctrine of omitting needless words in favour of marvelling…at the complexities of language and communication.

Charming… A gentle coming-of-age novel drawing on Batuman’s time at Harvard in the mid-1990s… It’s in such acute portrayals of early adulthood’s uncertainties that this pleasantly rambling tale leaves its most vivid impression.

A delightfully digressive campus novel.

There is more than one idiot in this delightful and slyly funny coming-of-age novel... Will strike a chord for any former fresher who felt the same way. (That would be all of us.)

Batuman, in seemingly writing a novel about nothing, has produced an incredibly complex, accurate and funny novel.

I never want to finish it, so I’m reading it very slowly.

Every page is thicketed with jokes, riffs, theories of language. It’s a portrait of an intellectual and sentimental education that offers almost unseemly pleasure.

Elif Batuman is a real writer, and should be allowed to write whatever the hell she likes.

Selin’s deadpan narration is often very funny indeed

This is a capacious book that creates an alternative world

At once clever and clueless, Batuman’s heroine shows us with just how messy it can be to forge a self

One of the best novels I read all summer... a painstakingly accurate depiction of the balancing act that is student-life. As clever as it is funny, Batuman's debut novel allows us to laugh at our own stupidity, and celebrate our own cluelessness.

The Idiot... manages the trick of being laugh-out-loud funny while not actually being a comedy. It just observers life, in all its truth and is hilarious for page after page.

I finally read The Idiot by Elif Batuman and everyone is correct, she is clearly a genius