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 many contemporary authors, mostly of the young man with interesting glasses variety, are far too pleased with themselves, and it affects their work negatively. If you are the most interesting thing about the book you wrote, that doesn't say much for your imagination, does it? Can't we all imagine characters more interesting than ourselves? Perhaps these authors were praised too much as children and didn't have to pretend they were someone else.