Everything is Illuminated in Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge

Apr 03, 2010 Jessica rated it really liked it · review of another edition

So: A Jewish author of Ukrainian descent, who happens to be named Jonathan Safran Foer, decides to go to Ukraine to research his family's history for a novel he's writing. He arranges through a travel agency to have a driver and a translator meet him when he arrives. However, what he gets for a translator is aspiring author Alex, who speaks broken English and turns out to be the son of the travel agency's owner; and the driver is Alex's grandfather, also named Alex, who claims to be blind and in So: A Jewish author of Ukrainian descent, who happens to be named Jonathan Safran Foer, decides to go to Ukraine to research his family's history for a novel he's writing. He arranges through a travel agency to have a driver and a translator meet him when he arrives. However, what he gets for a translator is aspiring author Alex, who speaks broken English and turns out to be the son of the travel agency's owner; and the driver is Alex's grandfather, also named Alex, who claims to be blind and insists on bringing along his flatulent seeing-eye-dog, Sammy Davis Junior, Junior. The two Alexes are well-meaning but horribly rude about Jonathan's vegetarianism, Jewishness, and fear of dogs, and they lead him on a wild goose chase throughout the Ukrainian countryside. Overall, not the most profitable adventure for our friend Jonathan.

Where it all gets interesting, though, is that we never actually hear Jonathan's side of the story. The book is told through three interweaving narratives: letters Alex writes to Jonathan after Jonathan has gone back to the States (which are clearly being answered by Jonathan, but we never see that side of the correspondence); Alex's attempt to novelize the adventures he had with Jonathan, his grandfather, and Sammy Davis Junior, Junior; and Jonathan's novel about his family history. Alex's writing is funny but painful to read - he looks everything up in a thesaurus to sound more educated, which only makes his lack of fluency more obvious; he wants more than anything for Jonathan to like him and look up to him; and he wants his connection with Jonathan to make it easier for him to move to America himself. He admits from time to time that he exaggerates things to make himself sound better, so we have an unreliable first-person narrative, a one-sided retelling of recent events, and a fictional novel attempting to describe Jonathan's ancestors. From this, the reader is left to piece together what actually happened on these adventures, which culminate in a search for a woman in a photograph - someone Jonathan wants to meet, but who is also clearly someone from Alex's grandfather's past.

It took me a little while to get drawn into the book because Alex's voice is off-putting at first, but there's a great story here, and the way it's told becomes progressively more interesting as the adventure unfolds. Highly recommended. ...more

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Apr 03, 2012 Julie rated it it was ok

Shelves: adult-fiction, festival-of-faith-and-writing

I did not enjoy this book but felt compelled to finish reading it.

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Dec 17, 2007 Renata rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction, re-read, grownup

I just re-read this. I don't think I liked it as much the second time. I'm not sure. Maybe I was just feeling grumpier the second time around.
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i thought i would get tired of alex's comic-effect bad english, but i never did. it was hilarious. also, it is hard to write a holocaust-journey-of-remembrance without being a big ol' cliche, but i didn't think this was. basically i liked it a whole lot and cried a l'il bit. ...more

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