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namaenani's review
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
2.0
ericfheiman's review
4.0
Essentially, the rare art piece that actually succeeds as a reading experience, too. I was ready to dismiss this unbelievably well-crafted object as a formalist stunt, but Foer's redacted "revision" of Bruno Schulz's Street of Crocodiles is as equally feverish and compelling as the original source material. A welcome surprise.
glitterkitter's review
4.0
For those who don't know, Tree of Codes was made by 'cutting out' words from the book Street of Crocodiles by Bruno Schulz. The words left tell the story of Tree of Codes. The whole idea of it intrigued me.
It's amazing that an actual story can be told by using this method. It takes a bit of effort to read, I felt my mind drifting at times. It was difficult to focus properly on the actual words, when I was trying to figure out what words I was supposed to be reading, and having to lift up the pages to see them properly. There are some wonderful sentences in there, and it seems difficult to know who to credit them to, Schulz for writing the words originally, or Foer for combining them in the right way.
It's amazing that an actual story can be told by using this method. It takes a bit of effort to read, I felt my mind drifting at times. It was difficult to focus properly on the actual words, when I was trying to figure out what words I was supposed to be reading, and having to lift up the pages to see them properly. There are some wonderful sentences in there, and it seems difficult to know who to credit them to, Schulz for writing the words originally, or Foer for combining them in the right way.
ermamac's review
2.0
I have waited a long time to read this book and so I have to say that I am rather disappointed. Although there were some beautifully constructed sentences, I felt that overall the book didn't really mean anything. I love Safran Foer and the construction of the book was so cool, but the book itself seems to have left no impression at all.
emmaholtegaard's review
2.0
When I read Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close I thought it was extremely gimmicky, and that really influenced how I felt about the novel overall, which was tbh. annoyed. As for this book, the gimmicks are definitely there, but it didn't bother me as much this time. It's hard to say exactly what this book is. It doesn't have a real narrative, but it does have characters. Mainly it's just very poetic. I thought certain passages were quite beautiful, and somehow managed to create something quite interesting. However, for the most part Tree of Codes just didn't make me feel anything. I had the same distancing experience as when I read Extremely Loud. The lack of narrative made me slightly bored. I can appreciate that it's mostly a poetic piece of work, but when reading poetry, for me the main "reward" is having an emotional response, and as I said, for a large part of the book that just didn't happen for me. I give it two stars mainly because of how creative and symbolic the idea of this book is. I actually think I like the idea of the book better that the actual book. I'm glad I read it, but as with previous experience with Foer, it didn't quite do it for me.
jpark414's review
4.0
This is poetry more than anything else. It makes me aware of how I read more than most Like reading subtext and seeing mirror-verse déjà vu sentences. Pretentious, yes. But also amazing.
katieparker's review
3.0
The book is more of a structural piece of art than a piece of fiction. Die-cut from Bruno Schulz’s Street of Crocodiles, Foer came up with a completely different story from the original work. And that story was actually rather hard for me to follow. They way the words were chosen and strung together, I felt like I was reading especially eloquent magnetic poetry. That’s not to say that it wasn’t good, but the actual plot is just a little difficult to make sense of due to the highly poetic feel:
"Only a few people noticed the lack of color, as in black-and-white photographs. This was real rather than metaphorical—a colorless sky, an enormous geometry of emptiness, a watery anonymous gray which did not throw shadows and did not stress anything, a screen placed to hide the true meanings of things, a facade behind which there was an overintense coloring."
Regardless of the content, the book itself is a delight to the senses. Closed, it looks like any other novel, but when you pick it up and look inside, you find that most of it has been carved away, revealing lone words, snippets of the original sentences, and dangling punctuation marks. It’s rather delicate, and I would be pretty hesitant to loan it out, but everyone should have a chance to experience this book that is just more than words on a page.
"Only a few people noticed the lack of color, as in black-and-white photographs. This was real rather than metaphorical—a colorless sky, an enormous geometry of emptiness, a watery anonymous gray which did not throw shadows and did not stress anything, a screen placed to hide the true meanings of things, a facade behind which there was an overintense coloring."
Regardless of the content, the book itself is a delight to the senses. Closed, it looks like any other novel, but when you pick it up and look inside, you find that most of it has been carved away, revealing lone words, snippets of the original sentences, and dangling punctuation marks. It’s rather delicate, and I would be pretty hesitant to loan it out, but everyone should have a chance to experience this book that is just more than words on a page.
sarahjoyce's review
5.0
Tree of Codes is interesting in it's complexities, it is part novel, part artist book and part poetry. The story itself was made by taking Bruno Schulz's The Street of Crocodiles, Foer's favorite book, and cutting out entire passages, leaving words, sentences or punctuation to make an entirely new story.
The pages are fragile and at first glance it's hard to see how this book, still meant to be read in a linear page-at-a-time pace. After a struggle I found that A. putting a sheet of paper under the page I was reading or B. holding the page up so that it wasn't flush with the rest of the book made the experiences much more enjoyable.
The story itself is less important. While I remember being entranced by the poetic narrative Foer carved out I'm hard pressed to remember actual details. Something about a deceased mother and father? I really don't remember much more than that. I don't think I'm alone in this aspect, though. You read Tree of Codes for the process and the story is secondary, though I do remember enjoying it quite a bit. That is my only pet peeve with Tree of Codes, but if anything it has me more excited to read it again than damning it to back of the bookshelf hell.
The pages are fragile and at first glance it's hard to see how this book, still meant to be read in a linear page-at-a-time pace. After a struggle I found that A. putting a sheet of paper under the page I was reading or B. holding the page up so that it wasn't flush with the rest of the book made the experiences much more enjoyable.
The story itself is less important. While I remember being entranced by the poetic narrative Foer carved out I'm hard pressed to remember actual details. Something about a deceased mother and father? I really don't remember much more than that. I don't think I'm alone in this aspect, though. You read Tree of Codes for the process and the story is secondary, though I do remember enjoying it quite a bit. That is my only pet peeve with Tree of Codes, but if anything it has me more excited to read it again than damning it to back of the bookshelf hell.