"It was the golden time of the year. Every day the leaves grew brighter, the air sharper, the grass more brilliant. The sunsets seemed to expand and melt and stretch for hours, and the brick facades glowed pink, and everything blue got bluer. How many perfect autumns did a person get? Why did I always seem to be in the wrong place, listening to the wrong music?"
I've been rereading Elif Batuman's Either/Or and found myself fixating on these lines.
It feels almost disarming to have someone articulate on paper a sensation so exact to the ways I have been feeling lately. I love the clarity that Batuman writes with. Her phrasing is so precise it hurts. Again and again I find myself returning to her novels, and to Selin as a character, as I find my own way through the absurd labyrinth of college life. I'm so grateful that books like this exist, and that I can read them.
