Harvard University, 1996

The majority of the novel takes place on Harvard’s campus, located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Selin often criticizes the administrative staff at Harvard as well as her pretentious, wealthy peers. Regarding her accepting into Harvard, Selin says, “My mother was sure I was going to become a great writer. Then I got into Harvard, like we had always wanted. My mom said that my getting in proved that she could have gotten in” (28). Generally, Batuman presents a quirky interpretation of Harvard students.

Ankara, Turkey

Selin spent every summer of her childhood in Ankara, at her grandmother’s apartment, despite her distaste for the place: “How hard I had tried to like those trips to Ankara, to feel that something interesting was happening—and not that I had been stricken somehow from the register of the living” (250). Selin revisits Ankara as a paid writer for Let’s Go...