New Yorker Fiction Review #179: "Constructed Worlds" by Elif Batuman

(photo credit: Mooske and Gripes)

Review of a short story from the Jan. 23, 2017 issue of The New Yorker...

Many times a short story starts off slow and it takes a while to get into it. Many times a short story starts out so slowly that you never get into it at all. Not the case with "Constructed Worlds," by Elif Batuman. In this case, the story started out really well but kind of tapered out to the finish. Still, it was good.

Set in the mid-90s, the story covers the main character's (presumably Batuman's own) first semester at college. There is something heart-breakingly touching about Batuman's re-telling of this phase of her life. Perhaps heart-breaking because it reminds me of my own first days at college and how everything -- every new person I met, every new adventure I had, every success and failure -- all felt heightened and more significant in a way that it probably never will again.

Batuman really hooked me with her opening passages in which she describes her first encounters with the new technology of "email." Funny to me because, having started college in the late 1990s myself, I experienced a bit of the same kind of disorientation. It was a charming and sort of wistful look back at a period in time many of us have already long forgotten.

I would like to go back and read Batuman's story again. I listened to it late last night and I can remember feeling that it runs on a bit long and could have been about 10 minutes shorter. Also, I feel as though Batuman feigns a certain cutesy innocence at times, an innocence I don't feel is completely genuine but somehow it does contribute to the character's sense of discovery.

The first semester at college is such a critical and poignant part of a person's life and, even if the story drags a bit, Batuman does a great job of remembering what it was like to be wide-eyed, confused, eager, and hopeful, looking for meaning in everything and learning -- most importantly -- how to "construct" ones life, after 18 years of having it constructed for you. I look forward to revistining this story sometime when I have time...ha.