How to unpack a book like "The Idiot." It's an expertly written novel, with an astonishing commitment to tone and character, unwavering in its adherence to what it wants to be. A book whose characters inhabit the mundane gray area between what they want to do and what they want to be and the ways in which those identities overlap. Over the course of a story with little in the way of plot, the story gradually concerns itself with the quiet reckonings characters face when unsure of what to do with themselves in the present moments of their lives, even if they think they have a firm grasp on what they want to be. Yet, for all the things I absolutely loved and admired about this book, I also found myself laboriously turning the pages, wishing its last sentence came sooner than it did.