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Everything is Illuminated

by Jonathan Safran Foer

3.88 · rating details · 47,538 ratings · 3,945 reviews

With only a yellowing photograph in hand, a young man -- also named Jonathan Safran Foer -- sets out to find the woman who may or may not have saved his grandfather from the Nazis. Accompanied by an old man haunted by memories of the war; an amorous dog named Sammy Davis, Junior, Junior; and the unforgettable Alex, a young Ukrainian translator who speaks in a sublimely but

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Paperback, 276 pages

Published April 1st 2003 by Harper Perennial (first published January 1st 2002)

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Sep 13, 2009

Kim rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: favorite-authors, contemporary, mmix

~~Sometimes reading makes me so angry~~

Dammit.

~~I’m a freaking mess. I realize this and I accept it.~~

Ugh.

Why, Jonathan Safran Foer? Why? Why do you do this to me? And why the hell are you so young? I know that some call you gimmicky and think that you are just a phosphoresce in the pannikin (yes, I, too, have access to Thesaurus.com) but I just…just…spleen them. They can read their Anderson and their Coetzee and leave us dreamers alone. I am ‘Team F...more

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Nov 14, 2009

Matthieu rated it

Recommended to Matthieu by: K.

After a while, you get so old,

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Sep 03, 2007

Mike rated it

I watched the movie of this first and loved it. It was basically a movie about cultural misunderstanding and how people can be cruel without really knowing it. It is a story about what happens when you put an American and someone born out of the Soviet era in the same room and try to make them explain to one another why the other one thinks the way they do. In a word: hilarious.

After reading the book, I still like the movie, but it seems obvious to me that the filmmakers missed th...moreI watched the movie of this first and loved it. It was basically a movie about cultural misunderstanding and how people can be cruel without really knowing it. It is a story about what happens when you put an American and someone born out of the Soviet era in the same room and try to make them explain to one another why the other one thinks the way they do. In a word: hilarious.

After reading the book, I still like the movie, but it seems obvious to me that the filmmakers missed the point entirely. The book, while still a hilarious exploration of an American immersed in post-Soviet culture, is so much deeper and weirder.

The story is (sort of) about the author, Jonathan Safran Foer. He is an aspiring writer in his early 20s who travels to Ukraine to try to find the small Jewish village of Trachimbrod where his grandfather grew up and to find the woman who helped him escape the Nazis during the war. He speaks no Ukrainian or Russian, and his only maps of the area are 60 years old, so he enlists the help of Alexander, an Odessa native of about the same age, his blind grandfather, who acts as their driver (if you have read any modern Russian literature you will understand not to question this kind of thing) and their deranged seeing-eye bitch Sammy Davis Junior, Junior.

Half of the story (the half on which the movie is based) is ostensibly written by Alex. He write in English with an accent, in that (I assume) it was written, then rewritten by looking up every third word in the thesaurus and replacing it with the least appropriate synonym. This section is a humorous, touching, narrative touching on the nature of friendship, grief and regret, among other things. It is accessible and easy to understand.

The other half (which is entirely ignored by the movie) is written by Jonathan, and covers the history of the village from the day it got its name in 1791 until its destruction by the Nazis in 1941, following the exploits of his ancestors. All of these sections have a very surreal quality. They jump around in time, different eras have glimpses into the past and future. Everything that happens is completely bizarre and makes no sense. It explores much more difficult topics, such as the nature of life, love, and art, and is in general much more philosophical and harder to get your head around.

These sections are split by letters from Alexander to Jonathan commenting on Jonathan's sections and introducing his own next section.

The weird thing about this book is that, at least for me, it gets frustrating to read the author's crazy attempts at philosophy. He wanders around so much, it seems like he is trying to write a little mini-story for every emotion he's every experienced in his entire life. Normally, I would discard a book like this and say, "Well, it's a young author's overeager first attempt, and he tried to cover too much." However, there are so many parts in Alex's letters and narrative where these things are addressed (once Jonathan says something like, "I want to be a writer, but I'm not good yet.") and Alex asks a lot of questions like Why do you write like this? and Why did you have the characters do that? The incoherence of it all becomes a part of the greater logic of the novel, which in turn provides an answer to the question, "Why did Jewish people stay in Poland and Ukraine when they knew the Nazis were coming?" This books answer, I imagine, would be, "Because nothing anyone did in the village's 150 year history made sense, why should they have done the sensible thing in 1941?"

The book is hilarious, moving and disturbing among other things. I can't help but be annoyed by its weird narrative and pointless philosophical musings, but given that it bathes itself in its own strangeness, it raises itself up and becomes a pretty awesome book.(less)

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Dec 04, 2009

Bram rated it

Shelves: 2009

Everything Is Illuminated is one of the most focused books I’ve read. It doesn’t meander inappropriately, and there’s almost no excess. Seriously, this book’s got less fat than Christian Bale in The Machinist. It's either in full-on comedy mode, full-on fanciful mode, full-on drama mode, or some well-balanced combination of the three. Foer spent years editing the novel from his initial college thesis draft, and it shows—in a good way. There's no lag, and given some of the other books I was ...moreEverything Is Illuminated is one of the most focused books I’ve read. It doesn’t meander inappropriately, and there’s almost no excess. Seriously, this book’s got less fat than Christian Bale in The Machinist. It's either in full-on comedy mode, full-on fanciful mode, full-on drama mode, or some well-balanced combination of the three. Foer spent years editing the novel from his initial college thesis draft, and it shows—in a good way. There's no lag, and given some of the other books I was reading at the time (e.g. The Recognitions), this leanness and pacing were very welcome.

Moreover, I don’t think I’ve ever been so off-base with my preconceptions of a book. I’d somehow come to the conclusion that the controversy surrounding Foer was due to his pretentiousness, and I was prepared for something in-your-face erudite, clever, showy, and snarky (since I’d heard it was funny) with his first effort. This probably sounds idiotic for those of you familiar with Foer’s work, but that’s what I was expecting. The only question for me was: would he be able to use his pretentiousness in a way that I’d find enjoyable? But as I got into the book, what I found was one of the least pretentious literary novels I’ve ever read. And perhaps this puts the backlash that this guy’s received into a whole new light, although I don’t want to get into that right now. I’d rather talk about what Foer does (and does very well) in Everything Is Illuminated.

First, the humor. This book is funny, but not in the way I was expecting (Foer’s basically anti-snarky). And it’s with his comedy style that he probably makes most of his enemies. Instead of taking one of the modern American approaches to humor*, Foer utilizes the type of slapstick that ruled comedic cinema over 60 years ago and has more or less disappeared from popular culture. Bold, bold move. And one that I, as a long-time Abbot and Costello fan, happen to love. I’ve watched each Abbot and Costello movie between 3 and 25 times, and while I think their routines are brilliant, I’m also aware that the majority of Americans under 40 would likely yawn or cringe through many of them. It’s just a different style, full of classic gags sans sarcasm or irony, and one where any constraints of realism are given the boot while the routine is in progress—just like in Everything Is Illuminated. From Alex’s ludicrously over-the-top English, where Foer nabs Wallace’s gag of incorrectly substituting difficult words for easy ones, to the hero’s inconvenient vegetarianism; from the absurd dog behavior to the classic mistranslation humor reminiscent of the Pequod’s encounter with the French Rose-Bud, Foer never wastes an opportunity to inject an episode of hilarity. And to be honest, he’s not always successful. But when it works, and if you’re susceptible to this style of humor, you will laugh out loud.

I can’t think of another book that blends this kind of extreme comedy with fanciful melancholy so well (or even at all). The initially hidden sadness builds (in both the present-day storyline and the 18th-century through WWII storyline) to a dramatic moment that didn’t quite have the impact on me that Foer reaches for and that others have experienced. I’m not especially disappointed about this, although I am stuck knowing that I didn’t experience the emotional tidal wave that this book is capable of unleashing. But you might.

*Here I must rely on an excerpt from David Foster Wallace’s essay on Kafka’s humor: There's no recursive word-play or verbal stunt-pilotry, little in the way of wisecracks or mordant lampoon. There is no body-function humor in Kafka, nor sexual entendre, nor stylized attempts to rebel by offending convention. No Pynchonian slapstick with banana peels or rapacious adenoids. No Rothish satyriasis or Barthish metaparody or arch Woody-Allenish kvetching. There are none of the ba-bing ba-bang reversals of modern sit-coms; nor are there precocious children or profane grandparents or cynically insurgent co-workers. Ok, so there’s some word-play and maybe ‘Pynchonian slapstick’ could describe a few scenes in Everything is Illuminated, but since when was Thomas Pynchon’s sense-of-humor considered part of ‘contemporary U.S. amusement’?
(less)

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Jan 23, 2008

Robert Beveridge rated it

Shelves: finished, owned-and-gave-away

Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated (Dutton, 2002)

My, what a clever novel!

In any case, that, I imagine, is what Jonathan Safran Foer kept saying as he was writing this. And really, much about it is clever. The comparisons to A Clockwork Orange are completely unwarranted, as Alex, Foer's Ukrainian hero, destroys the English language in a quite different way than does Burgess' Alex. (A less politically correct but more conceptually accurate comparison would be Charl...moreJonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated (Dutton, 2002)

My, what a clever novel!

In any case, that, I imagine, is what Jonathan Safran Foer kept saying as he was writing this. And really, much about it is clever. The comparisons to A Clockwork Orange are completely unwarranted, as Alex, Foer's Ukrainian hero, destroys the English language in a quite different way than does Burgess' Alex. (A less politically correct but more conceptually accurate comparison would be Charlie Chan, as written by Earl Derr Biggers.) Foer's intertwining of stories is also quite clever, and his use of the two narrators to tell the main storylines.

However, with all the cleverness going on, Foer seems to have forgotten in many places to actually insert a novel. Threads pick up in odd places and then die with no fanfare, never to be resurrected again; the story has holes without being told an enough of an impressionist way to allow the reader to fill in enough blanks; the characters are obviously there as vehicles to carry off the cleverness, instead of being fully-realized human beings. In other words, this is a linguistic roller coaster, not a novel.

Not to say Foer doesn't write well when he forgets about the tricks and applies himself. Especially in the novel's last eighty pages, there are scenes of great beauty and tragedy that are conveyed in powerful manner that make the reader sit up and take notice. (The emotionl impact of every last one of them is dramatically undercut by Foer's following each with a needlessly scatological and/or pornographic piece of attempted humor, each of which fails because of its positioning, but the tragic pieces themselves are extremely well-written.) Unfortunately, these scenes are all too few. One of them is going along swimmingly until he decides to interject a Rick Moody-esque three-page unpunctuated sentence. Horrid. (And a trick he repeats a couple of times afterwards, also throwing in run-on words. Even more horrid.)

The book is billed as a comedy, and Foer tries to carry it off as such, but when the finest-written scenes are those of tragedy, it's hard to call it a success as attempted. Foer has the makings of a fine dramatic writer, once he gets away from being so consciously clever. ** (less)

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Jan 11, 2012

Brian Godsey rated it

Recommends it for: everyone

Recommended to Brian by: Sammyatmiami

Shelves: totally-awesome-books, good-books, fiction

If I haven't laid out my good-book-philosophy yet, then I'll do it here. It needs to be done some time, or else any reviews I write would be somewhat out of context. So, here goes:

To me, there are two main parts, or aspects, of a book. One is the story, and the other is the way it is written. When I say "story", I mean everything that happens in the book, as it would happen in real life (or some other life, in sci-fi), while the "way it is written" is, of course, ...more

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Kris wow, i'm impressed. i'm way too lazy to write half that much. i have to say that i think your theory is a pretty good one. case in point: i read t...more
Sep 13, 2008 09:30pm

deleted user Ha! I absolutely love your comment and the fact that you consider one of JSF's books as brilliant as I consider it to be. Plus, now I've got the feeli...moreHa! I absolutely love your comment and the fact that you consider one of JSF's books as brilliant as I consider it to be. Plus, now I've got the feeling I owe you an explanation as to my good-book-philosophy. Mostly, because you keep telling me about these totally awesome books like Catch 22.

Yes, I've read it(finally) and yes, probably I took too long to read it, forgetting some of the names while reading it and probably forgetting what it was like when I took up the book and started reading in the first place. The good thing is, I can totally anticipate why you (and others) like it so much, as - I have to admit - it's brilliantly written, as considers both plot and writing style.
I like how each chapter features another protagonist yet always the same in some way, I like the sarcasm, really black sarcasm that keeps the book and the main character so much alive as well as dead or dying to some extent. Heller depicts a world coherent in itsself in its chaos and the abyss of human existence during war, exhibiting misère and indifference towards the latter as sole resource to surviving. I am stunned at the way he employs language, the multitude of words I have not encountered before.

Considering your division in story and 'the way it is written' this book definitely scores high. Yet, as for my philosophy I have to add some more aspects. First, I think each book/novel/movie/piece of music/etc. has it's very own time. Meaning that I can read one and the same book at two (or more?) different points in my life and feel completely different about it. [e.g. Paolo Coehlo books - I devoured them some time ago, but now I am somewhat past them] Maybe, if I read Heller's book in let's say a year or so, I rate it very much dissimilar to how I see it now.

That is because - as my very own 2nd (or 4th) aspect to rating a book - I feel books have to talk to me, move me, change the way I see them and the world, fill me with new ideas, and let me think about where I am and what I want or what I would want if I were there, right there in the book with some of the characters. I guess one can call this identification with the protagonists, but I guess it's more. Basically, there is a message (I mean maybe there doesn't have to be one), but I feel there always is. And whether the author intended to bring across this very message or not (because it might never fit a 100 % to what reader take out of it anyways), I take it in, and I try to do something with it. JSF books and some others mastered this task with me, they moved me not only on a literary level, so I would appreciate what they could do or how they did use their writing skills, but also on a very personal I-and-my-life-where-I-am-right-now level.

Catch 22 is surely a briliant book, but maybe it's just not the right time for me now to appreciate it fully - and then again, maybe I never will, but that's ok :)(less)
Sep 14, 2008 03:17am

Brian Godsey Kris, please do let me know what you think about JSFs book. He's definitely a good author; hopefully he keeps putting them out there. I would also lik...moreKris, please do let me know what you think about JSFs book. He's definitely a good author; hopefully he keeps putting them out there. I would also like to say that you probably wrote more in response ot my review than you have for your own reviews. Nice. At least you know someone's reading it!

And Clara.... Clara, Clara. I seem to remember having a discussion with you previously (actually a long time ago, at Coco's, unpredictably) in which I was describing my philosophy that there are three answers to the question, "What do you think of diversity on a college campus?" The first answer is, "diversity is good.. blah blah blah" we've all heard that crap. The second and smarter answer is "diversity is more than what you see in checkboxes on an application; diversity is about perspectives" and so on. Kris, I know you're with me, because both of us are zero-dimension "diverse", which is like filling out a college application and checking the box next to "DIVERSE" or "NOT DIVERSE". You know, it doesn't matter what you're different from as long as you're different. And lastly there's the third (and smartest, if I do say so myself) answer to the question, which goes something like, "talking about diversity at a scholarship interview is bullshit because (1) what box I check on the application doesn't change the person I am and (2) you don't have a better way to measure my "diversity" (in inches, maybe?), so you might as well stop trying."

And then, Clara, you seemed a bit excited as you started talking about a fourth answer, and then I believe you skipped any fifth answer (if there was one) and went to the sixth. I lost you pretty quickly, and I attribute that to the overwhelming creativity consuming your brain, but also to this creativity's inability to draw a well-defined line of the right thickness between your answers.

No worries, I studied math, so I'm well-trained at defining things. While I totally agree with your third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and so on... aspects of "good" books, I'm going to stop you somewhere before infinity to say that I am trying to separate a book being "good" from "me enjoying a book". My personality and perspective certainly have an impact on my impression of a book, but they will never change that a book is cleverly written, or that a story is enthralling. If you read the book again years later, you might give Catch-22 one star more, but the book's not going to be any better (or worse) than it was this time.

Hey no hard feelings ;-) I hope you don't mind a little verarschen! It's just that my mind works in categories, and I like to build my walls high and well-defended.(less)
Sep 29, 2008 03:35pm

Jul 02, 2009

Beth rated it

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Probably in the top 3 best books I've read in the past 5 years. It is not an easy book to read, and it is at times bizarre and vaguely offensive. But it is also hearbreaking and heartwarming and funny and thought-provoking.

Throughout the novel, Jonathan is referred to as the "hero" by Sasha/Alex, but I believe that Sasha ends up being the real hero. I don't think that Jonathan becomes some sort of terrible person, but it is telling that Jonathon and Sasha stop writing to e...moreProbably in the top 3 best books I've read in the past 5 years. It is not an easy book to read, and it is at times bizarre and vaguely offensive. But it is also hearbreaking and heartwarming and funny and thought-provoking.

Throughout the novel, Jonathan is referred to as the "hero" by Sasha/Alex, but I believe that Sasha ends up being the real hero. I don't think that Jonathan becomes some sort of terrible person, but it is telling that Jonathon and Sasha stop writing to each other. I believe it is because Sasha has come away with a much deeper understanding of himself from their trip, while Jonathan seems to have mostly come away with good writing material. Sasha becomes so angry with Jonathon's story because it is not truthful in the way that Sasha is truthful. Jonathan wants to take pieces of what he knows for sure, and embellish and expound and fictionalize it to make enticing fiction. In doing so, he does make his grandfather out to be a pretty bizarre person, taking only his supposition that his grandfather had a dead arm and a lot of teeth as a baby, and looking through his journal, and then making up this whole ridiculous story about how the Safran had affairs with over 2,000 women because they were strangely attracted to the dead arm. Sasha, on the other hand, comes away from the trip with a better understanding of, and deeper love for, his grandfather, and a commitment to truth. He realizes the value of truth in seeing what his grandfather had to live with and in coming clean on certain aspects of his life. For instance, he admits that he is a virgin, though he boasted in the beginning of how many women he was "carnal" with. And he is not especially tall, as he also boasted about in the beginning. He also embraces his love for Ukraine, giving his savings away and deciding to stay there and take care of his family. And he is finally able to stand up to his drunken father and banish him from the family.

So, I believe that the title refers to the way the past illuminates the present, and the present illuminates the past. But differently for our two "heroes". For Jonathan, he has found the material he needs to become the writer he believes he was born to be. For Sasha, he has found the truth he needs to become the man he wants to be. You could argue the value of each. Jonathan writes everything down, documents the names on all of Lista's boxes, reads guidebooks on properly dealing with Ukrainians. Sasha listens to the stories, takes it all in, doesn't think to worry about each little detail to remember forever. Sasha is more concerned with understanding the heart of the truth, in short, while Jonathon wants the material to use later.

In one final thought, I remember that Ernest Hemingway was mentioned at some point in the novel, I believe by Sasha in talking about Jonathan becoming a great American writer. I took an American Lit class in which we discussed the novel Garden of Eden by Hemingway, and the way in which Hemingway addressed the guilt of the writer who puts themselves and those they love in emotionally reckless positions in order to create good writing material. I just thought it was interesting that his name comes into this novel because of Jonathan's intentions. Not that Jonathan creates any sort of emotionally reckless situation, but he in some way sells out his family history in order to write an interesting book.

On a side note, don't see the movie if you want it to be like the book. The movie felt like the screenwriter thoroughly read the first half of the book, and then skimmed the rest in about 8 minutes and threw the movie together from that. I felt like it missed everything that was important about the story.(less)

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Jul 13, 2007

Nils Samuels rated it

Recommends it for: twenty-somethings

I could go on and on about how what is clever at 25 grows less so as we age, about how metafiction resonates more with young men who have yet to face the issues that do have enduring meaning in life (durational love, children, divorce, death), about how tapping into the Holocaust for emotional weight seems increasingly to be cheating. But enough. There are already mixed reviews that discuss the limits of this novel. Read those. Smart but not especially emotionally or psychologically interest...more

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May 28, 2007

Nathan rated it

The gut-tickling malaprop voice of Alex, bragging falsely (but without a trace of guile) in a broken idiolect that suggests computer translation gone awry, is worth the price of admission all by itself. Sadly, the rest of the book -- much of it strung out in unimaginative flashback episodes -- is a turgid, half-baked mess. Reading just Alex's bits and ignoring the rest would be a bit like picking out all the chocolate chips from a bag of trailmix...but that may be the best way to snack here.

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Jul 19, 2007

Ben rated it

· review of another edition

Sorry but I didn't care for this at all. If Mr. Nobody wrote a book about himself as the main character, and used some uninventive malapropisms to make discussions with a foreigner amusing, the book would be tossed. But wait, Foer went to Yale. Unfortunately for me the quality of his writing shows me that nepotism will always beat out merit these days. Sorry to be harsh, but really, I found the writing to be quite poor.

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Feb 09, 2012

Kua rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, a-2-5, reading-challenge-2012

All'inizio, non ci capivo una mazza... poi proseguendo nella lettura ho cominciato a trovare i fili da seguire e questo scoprire il libro pian piano mi è piaciuto molto. Questo racconto è tenero, malinconico, cinico, buffo, straziante... insomma, un bel problema tirarne fuori una recensione con i dovuti crismi. Nonostante alcune pecche narrative, è un libro che ti porta in un'altra dimensione, da cui poi è difficile staccarsi e pur trattando un tema forte come l'olocausto la lettura rimane legge...more

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May 17, 2008

Jim rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: Those seeking fresh voices in literature

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This brilliant debut novel by Jonathan Safran Foer is a deeply-felt imaginative achievement. It is wholly recommendable, even if it is only half of a good book. The half that is good--no, great--is so worthy as to overshadow the book's other half, which is, sad to say, an embarassing if rightly-intended misfire.

The half that is successful is the tale of the fictional Jonathan Safran Foer's search for the story of his ancestors. It is successful as a story, but especially in the wa...moreThis brilliant debut novel by Jonathan Safran Foer is a deeply-felt imaginative achievement. It is wholly recommendable, even if it is only half of a good book. The half that is good--no, great--is so worthy as to overshadow the book's other half, which is, sad to say, an embarassing if rightly-intended misfire.

The half that is successful is the tale of the fictional Jonathan Safran Foer's search for the story of his ancestors. It is successful as a story, but especially in the way it is told, in the hilarious, fractured, malapropriate voice of Alex, the Ukrainian translator/guide. Alex's way of speaking jumps instantly into the pantheon of great narratorial voices in literature, right next to Huckleberry Finn, to whom the technique hugely owes allegiance. Foer is doing the Twain bit of putting his story in the mouth of of a speaker of "substandard English," and of letting this voice become, eventually, poetic and utterly profound. It is a great and a wonderful achievement.

Part of what is terrific about this is that Alex's voice changes throughout the course of the narrative, as he learns more correct English from his writer-idol, Foer. So the book shows not only a narrative arc, but a corresponding arc of style as well.

The Alex-spoken chapters alternate with the supposed novel about his ancestors which the fictional Foer is writing, and which Alex progressively comments on when his sections come around again. Unfortunately, the quaint story of the ancestors in their small village doesn't have the brilliance of Alex's parts. This whole section of the novel reads like a Jewish folktale, full of magical-realist touches, but somehow it doesn't have a stamp of truth or real honesty to it. it comes off as cloying and precious, to tell the truth.

It might be argued that this quality was a very deliberate choice by the author. The idea here, completely supported by the novel as a whole, would be that the real story of the ancestors and their destruction in the holocaust is so harrowing that it cannot and should not be remembered by the fictional Foer. So instead, he creates this folktale version of events, with wild and magical characters and so forth.

Sure, I see that. I know that that is part of what is going on. The contrast between the story as told and the harrowing history as we eventually discover it it huge. But for me, it didn't work. The magical-realist nostalgia sections have to have an integrity and an honesty at their heart. And these are lacking in that, lacking in some deeply-felt spirit that would connect them with reality. They seem cartoony. They are trying way too hard. This is not Isaac Bashevis Singer, but is trying hard to be, and the attempt becomes embarassing after awhile.

The film version of the novel very rightly left out this half of the story entirely, and was very true to Alex's narrative. It worked, I thought, quite well.

As I said at the outset, though, the Alex parts are so well done, so strong and funny and well-told, that they carry the novel. Though only half-successful, this is a very good book. (less)

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May 03, 2008

Graeme Hinde rated it

This gets an extra star for a truly funny gag that carries the book for the first fifty or sixty pages. That's surprising and impressive mileage for a simple bit (the narrator, a non-native English speaker, relies heavily on a thesaurus, so that "a hard journey" is "a rigid journey"), but after it wears off -- grinding agony.

Foer wants to be Gabriel Garcia Marquez, but his magic is insipid and his realism is lazily dishonest. He consistently goes for an easy lie...more

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Jun 03, 2008

Lucy rated it

This book is hard to piece together. It's even harder to write about.

If Everything Is Illuminated had to be categorized onto one shelf, I'd assign it a spot alongside other books about the holocaust. Or maybe about love. No, it's about friendship. Scratch that...it's really about loneliness.

Whatever it actually is about, Jonathan Safran Foer seems to be too odd of a man, and definitely too odd of an author, to define the book or narrow its focus. The minute the reader doe...moreThis book is hard to piece together. It's even harder to write about.

If Everything Is Illuminated had to be categorized onto one shelf, I'd assign it a spot alongside other books about the holocaust. Or maybe about love. No, it's about friendship. Scratch that...it's really about loneliness.

Whatever it actually is about, Jonathan Safran Foer seems to be too odd of a man, and definitely too odd of an author, to define the book or narrow its focus. The minute the reader does, Foer changes the tempo and direction of the book. Sometimes, the stories of cruelty are cover-your-eyes horrible. Sometimes, the situations are uncomfortably obscene. Sometimes, the story and characters are folklorist-y bizarre. Sometimes, it's modern-age hilarious. A lot of the time, it's furrow-your-brow confusing. Everything definitely did not get illuminated for me.

With broad, sweeping strokes, I'll attempt to give a basic summary of the book. A young 20 year-old Jewish man, whose name also happens to be Jonathan Safran Foer, travels to the Ukraine in an attempt to track down a woman in a photograph named Augustine, who saved his grandfather from the Nazis. To help him, he hires a tour guide/translator named Alex, whose English appears to have been mostly learned directly from a thesaurus. The nouns and verbs he chooses are almost always slightly off, but kind of, sort of close, and the reader is forced to translate almost all of Alex's narrative into actual English. Part of the book is written as letters from Alex to Jonathan as explanations for his translations and editions. Some of it is what the character Jonathan Safran Foer writes as his novel (after his return from his trip) and some of it is narrative of the actual trip, given by Alex. When the parts are put together as a whole novel, the reader is forced to be quite patient and thorough to finish the book actually understanding all of what happened, and even more willing to be content with its loose ends that will never be tied.

While Alex's broken English can certainly be funny, it slows down the pace of the novel (because it's impossible to read it fast) too much. Thankfully, his conversational skills do improve and his letters to Jonathan towards the end are much more accessible. Additionally, because both Alex and Jonathan are young and male, there is quite a bit of sexual humor that turns out to be quite harmless, and even slightly endearing, but still makes the overall effect a bit R-rated.

There are so many characters to keep track of and I'm not exactly certain if I figured out who was who and if they mattered. Ultimately, I think most didn't matter because, again, I think the take-home message is meant to be about the horrors of the holocaust and how good people can do bad things. If not, then I missed a whole lot.

If you do attempt this book, read it patiently. It might help to read it as part of a group effort. Then, perhaps if you're able to talk it through and everyone brings their own understanding into a collective whole, everything about this novel might actually BECOME illuminated.(less)

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Jun 14, 2008

Jule rated it

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Recommended to Jule by: Meike

I liked the idea of the plot a lot: Young Jewish-American (Jonathan) travels to Ukraine to find his family's past. Ends up driving around with his interpreter Alex (bad English), Alex's grandfather (half-blind, nevertheless the designated driver), and their family dog (flatulent). Sounds hilarious. And it is! But that is only the smallest part of the novel. There are also historical sections (from waaay way back) about the village that Jonathan's grandfather (tiny little shtetl in the middle of ...more

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Feb 21, 2008

Heidi Nemo rated it

Overhyped, yess. But the embedded bits of brilliance are worthwhile. The play of language is what I'm most interested in here, more than the meditations on loss, holocaust, and history's shadow of brutality, personal (micro) history intersecting with, building, and being torn apart by, macro history. Those elements are there, yes.
But Alex's play of language, it goes on even in the midst of disaster. Yeah, it's a metaphor for the difficulty of all cultural, and thus personal, understanding ...more

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Jan 17, 2008

Martine rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: modern-fiction, postmodern, film, north-american, magic-realism

I'm not sure how I feel about this, one of the most overhyped novels of the early noughties. On the one hand, it undeniably contains flashes of genius. It is original, inventive and ambitious, which is great. On the other hand, it has a few aspects which annoyed me, and that, I think, is less good.

In a nutshell, Everything Is Illuminated is an amalgam of three interconnected stories. The first is that of a young Jewish American (bearing the same name as the author) who visits the Ukr...moreI'm not sure how I feel about this, one of the most overhyped novels of the early noughties. On the one hand, it undeniably contains flashes of genius. It is original, inventive and ambitious, which is great. On the other hand, it has a few aspects which annoyed me, and that, I think, is less good.

In a nutshell, Everything Is Illuminated is an amalgam of three interconnected stories. The first is that of a young Jewish American (bearing the same name as the author) who visits the Ukraine in an attempt to find the woman who saved his grandfather from the Nazis and without whom he himself would never have been born. This part of the story is told by Alex, the flashy young Ukrainian who serves as Jonathan's interpreter. Alex's subsequent letters to Jonathan, written in a bizarre, highly ornate and seriously mangled kind of English, make up the second storyline. Finally, the third storyline consists of the magic-realist novel Jonathan writes about life in his grandfather's Jewish village before the Nazis destroyed it. Together, the three storylines tell a tale of friendship, guilt, family secrets, atrocities, opportunities, dreams and ways of dealing with drama which is at turns funny and shocking and occasionally beautifully nostalgic.

As I said, there is much about the book that is to be admired. Foer is undeniably a gifted writer. He relishes his stories and has a lot of fun sharing them with the reader. Sadly, though, he is rather uneven, following passages of great beauty (especially towards the end of the book) with scenes which are so crass that they completely ruin the effect. He also tries a bit too hard to be clever and original, coming up with gimmicks and typographical idiosyncrasies which are interesting at first but do rather distract from the narrative. And then there's the book's main gimmick, which is Alex' mangled English. While frequently funny, it is also entirely unconvincing from a linguistic point of view, and I'm enough of a linguist to care about such things. Halfway through the book I got so fed up with Alex' overwritten language that I began to dread his parts of the narrative. I doubt that was Foer's intention.

So. Yeah. It's an interesting tale, but I wish Foer had waited a few years before telling it. I'm pretty sure he'll mature into an excellent author; this story just happened to come a bit too early in his career to live up to the hype.
(less)

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Mar 07, 2007

ElizaBeth rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: everyone, specifically Nathan and Adam

I was in pain from laughing so much during the first part of this book. I've never enjoyed a "non-native" English speaker's writing so much. Although it gets less funny and more serious as it progresses, and it occasionally treads on the unclear / confusing side of things, I think that's just part of it: you aren't supposed to fully understand everything that's happening. All in all, one of the most memorable books I've read in a while.

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Feb 28, 2007

Tova rated it

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I think Jonathan Safron Foer (sp?)is greatly overrated.

I felt like he was constantly saying, "ooh, aren't i smart, isn't that clever? do you like that?" he was too close to his material somehow.

I also felt compelled after reading this to do some writing of my own. His voice is being heard, now, where's a voice that i feel speaks for me, for my experience. hopefully that will yet happen!

tt

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Mar 01, 2008

Elaine rated it

Mixed feelings about this novel. Overall, I liked it and would recommend it to any fan of literary fiction, Jewish history, history in general, and genealogy. It's very different from the film, which slices out at least one-half of the novel: the backstory. The film is a well-done "road movie" set in the Ukraine and following the three main characters, Alex, Alex's grandfather Sasha, and Jonathan, as they search for the elusive town of Trachimbrod. The novel, however, is less focused o...more

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Jul 12, 2007

Adam rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: no-one

Shelves: couldntfinishit, annoying

I had tried to read this in 2005 and dropped it after chapter two because of the irritatingly eleven-out-of-ten faux-quaint yiddish-eccentric overdrive of the sections set in Foer's grandmother's shtetl. But then I saw the film and fell in love with Alexi-stop-spleening-me, the film's narrator, and I thought I'd give the book another go. By this time I'd read Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close as well, and enjoyed it, so I was more favourably disposed to Foer.

I got further the secon...more

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Dec 17, 2007

Emily rated it

I disliked the character named "Jonathan Safran Foer" and I cannot stand when authors make themselves the heroes of fiction. You made up the story, you can't make up a name for the character? The ESL narrator Alex is the reason I like the book at all. He probably would have been even better if I hadn't seen Borat. He writes like Borat speaks, especially in the beginning of the book. But he is generous and grows emotionally, whereas JSF is snide and self-involved. It seems to me that ma...more

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Mar 30, 2007

jesse rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: people who are relatively unversed in holocaust literature, pynchon, auster, gaddes or Dow Mossman

Sure, JSF was overhyped and I shouldn't blame him for that. Sure, for a 23 year old, I suppose EiI is pretty remarkable, and yes, it moved me now and then. But literature is not a dog show. I shouldn't have to say to myself, "Well, isn't it amazing that he was only 23 when he wrote this?"

Secondly, I caught on to his shtick early on. Throughout the entire book, when he is not patting his alter ego on the back for being so tortured and brilliant, JSF basically passes off as ...more

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May 14, 2007

Melanie rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: ANYONE

Shelves: alltimefavorites

Wow...I heard great things about this book, and have read it twice. You will laugh so hard you'll cry during the first page. This book is my #2 favorite of all time. You get sucked into the characters and their surroundings, which alternates between modern Ukraine, WWII-era Ukraine and a third time period that I can only describe as fantastical, magical and sad, sad, sad. Remember the first time you read "One Hundred Years of Solitude" and you wished you could slow down your reading ...more

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Mar 06, 2008

Bells rated it

· review of another edition

if you can see from someone's comments, it took me awhile to get through this book. No, it's not war and peace. I found it amusing in some parts and others were kind of slow for me... the humor is warped, but i like that in an author!

I believe this was his first novel - and I have to give him props for that - a solid effort.

I enjoyed it, but not enough to read it straight thru. other books got in the way... I have this book problem, you see.

Hey, I can quit an...more

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Aug 06, 2008

Dave rated it

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The first time I picked up this book, it was difficult to get into. I put it down for a while, read a couple other books, and when I picked it back up again, for some reason it clicked. Everytime Foer switched narritives, I didn't want them to end, only to start another one that I didn't want to end. As far as Foer's writtings are concerned, I liked 'Extremely Loud' better, but stll would recomend this book to anyone. It's late. I'm going to bed now.

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Jan 16, 2009

Jesse rated it

· review of another edition

"These are my ghosts, the spaces amid love."

The quote is worth the weight of the book, that at times is an absurdist rendition of a Jewish stetl attempting to prove that even the Holocaust can be postmodern and jaunty, and at times a tear-jerker, confused about where it's going and where it's been, similar to your lead characters Alex, Jonathan and Alex Sr. Even Sammy Davis Junior Junior, a deranged "officious seeing eye bitch" seems to be unsure of her footing in...more

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Oct 08, 2011

Melinda rated it

Shelves: book-club

why can't you give a book ZERO or even NEGATIVE stars?

I don't care if I don't garner a lot of "helpful" reviews here... I just need to vent. JSF is nobody. I HATE his writing style and he doesn't get extra points for only being 25 when we published this. The story of Bume is lifted STRAIGHT out of the story of Remedious the Beauty from 100 Years of Solitude, and he even uses the same literary trick by naming everyone the same name (fortunately, they all have stupid nickname...more

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Ashley I have finally found someone who hates this book as I much as I do. Yay! All my "enlightened" friends think it is genius. I went into readin...more
Jan 10, 2012 08:01pm

Melinda Hi Ashley,

Just a quick warning on Incredibly Close..... I hated that too, but at least it made sense. But I've been barfing over the TV comm...more
Jan 11, 2012 10:37am

Jul 07, 2010

Joselito rated it

· review of another edition

A show off. He even named one of his characters Jonathan Safran Foer.

It is like he sees Haruki Murakami juggling five bowling pins and he says he can do that too, so he juggles five bowling pins with ease. Then he sees Ernest Hemingway juggling ten bowling pins and he says he can do that too so he juggles ten bowling pins and he even smiles while doing it. Then he sees Gabriel Garcia Marquez juggling fifteen bowling pins and he says he can do that too, and he does it. Then somebody s...more

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Feb 08, 2010

Jeremy rated it

There are two of my favorite famous type peeps born in the same year as myself: Jonathan Safran Foer and Tom Brady. At the same age as myself these two have accomplished things that make me both happy and a bit wondering what the hell I did wrong? How did I not publish 3 books by this age? How did I not win 3 superbowls or sporting equivalents? And both have been rewarded maganimously for their efforts. And both have earned their fair share of haters.

I read this with much ant...moreThere are two of my favorite famous type peeps born in the same year as myself: Jonathan Safran Foer and Tom Brady. At the same age as myself these two have accomplished things that make me both happy and a bit wondering what the hell I did wrong? How did I not publish 3 books by this age? How did I not win 3 superbowls or sporting equivalents? And both have been rewarded maganimously for their efforts. And both have earned their fair share of haters.

I read this with much anticipation as I had read and loved Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close a few years back. I will say that I did not love this one nearly as much but I liked it a great deal. I also am more than impressed by what he did with his first novel and to know how far he came in his second.

***MILD SPOILERS perhaps...not sure....****
While there was this common theme of sadness and love in both books, the plot was entirely different. It was a bit hard to follow in the beginning with two narratives occuring that partly converged as the novel went on and also went from funny and light hearted to dark and serious. One of the clever aspects is that the Ukranian is narrating the story of the author coming to the Ukraine and he is obviously embellishing parts of the story. Then Foer, also the visitor/author in the story is using parts of that trip experience as the plot in his own story. It is a bit cyclic.

***END POSSIBLY MAYBE SPOILER***

Whether or not this is a 3 or 4 or 5 star book, it is good. Don't listen to the haters. They will have you think that Foer is trying to be clever for the sake of being clever. That he is using literary tricks to fool you into liking the story. They are wrong. They are jealous and envious that he has a measure of success in literature and they can merely write a review about it.

Here is to the haters!

***Late add on****
I meant to say that this was almost like a book written by the combination of John Irving and Terry Pratchett if that is possible.
(less)

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About Jonathan Safran Foer

Jonathan Safran Foer (born 1977) is an American writer best known for his 2002 novel Everything Is Illuminated. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife, the novelist Nicole Krauss, and their son, Sasha.

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Everything is Illuminated & Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

A Convergence of Birds: Original Fiction and Poetry Inspired by Joseph Cornell

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“If there is no love in the world, we will make a new world, and we will give it walls, and we will furnish it with soft, red interiors, from the inside out, and give it a knocker that resonates like a diamond falling to a jeweller's felt so that we should never hear it. Love me, because love doesn't exist, and I have tried everything that does.” — 1,086 people liked it

“One day you will do things for me that you hate. That is what it means to be family.” — 606 people liked it

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