In one respect, The Idiot, a debut novel by Elif Batuman, staff writer at the New Yorker, is an expansion of the Hungary-based segment of her nonfiction The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them. Ironically, however, it strikes you as throwaway material that didn’t merit inclusion in that well-received work. It’s mostly bland and boring. At over 400 pages, it also feels interminable.

To be sure, the novel isn’t without its (meagre) charms. The Idiot revolves around an anxiety-ridden Turkish-American woman’s flailing attempts to make sense of language and love during her freshman year at Harvard University, where she’s majoring in linguistics, followed by her struggle to teach English to children in rural Hungary over the summer. New Jersey-raised Selin, who serves as narrator, protagonist and apparent stand-in for Batuman, proves likable despite almost crippling self-doubt. She memorably satirizes aspects of postmodernist theories, the pitfalls of a new means of communication called email (it’s 1995-96), and culture clash in Hungary — reproducing an incident from The Possessed in which she judges a beauty contest for adolescent boys’ legs. An aspiring writer, Selin is no idiot, whether in the Dostoyevskian or the usual sense, but believes she falls into the latter category due to a lack of both intellectual originality and savoir faire.

Unfortunately, the story is devoid of plot. Nor does it qualify as episodic; a series of tightly structured events would have been welcome. Instead, we get a roving look at life at Harvard, followed by a slightly more focused depiction of Selin’s time in Hungary. Holding these two halves together is a dull character named Ivan, with whom the virginal Selin is hopelessly besotted. The Hungarian Ivan, a Harvard senior majoring in mathematics, makes Selin’s acquaintance in Russian language class. Despite their mutual attraction, much misunderstanding ensues, in part because he may be spoken for. Nevertheless, Selin decides to spend a portion of her summer teaching English in Hungary owing to Ivan’s simultaneous presence in the country.

“Hungary felt . . . like reading War and Peace: new characters came up every five minutes, with their unusual names and distinctive locutions, and you had to pay attention to them for a time, even though you might never see them again for the whole rest of the book,” claims Selin. Perhaps. Yet, as with Harvard, nothing much of note happens there.

Ultimately, you cannot but wonder why Batuman wrote such a meandering and listless novel. Because it reflects her real-life experiences? If so, the author would do well to emulate a minor character in The Idiot, who, unlike Selin and a friend of hers, “doesn’t compulsively rehash everything that happens to her in the form of a story.”