Reviews

Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer

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genorgana's review

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LOVED IT
Very well written with brilliant humor - a great read.

bhnmt61's review against another edition

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4.0

I’ve had this book for years— probably at least ten years. I loved his other novel, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, so I’d always meant to read this one, and I finally did. It was hailed as an astonishingly brilliant debut novel when it came out in 2002 (Foer was in his mid-twenties), but I don’t think it has aged well.

There are sections of it that are terrifically well done. The point of view shifts from a character named Jonathan Safran Foer who is trying to track down his ancestral roots in “the” Ukraine; Sasha, his translator; and intermittent sections told in third person that are supposed to be the novel that Jonathan is writing. Foer deals with memory and family and family stories/legends, the difficulty of making a friend across cultures, and most of all, the impossibility of knowing what really happened. I actually pulled out a pen to underline some things, which I have only rarely done since grad school.

I will only make myself sound ridiculous if I try to say what I mean by “it hasn’t aged well,” but it seemed a bit trite at times, and knowingly over-complex at others— like one of those jugglers with ten plates spinning in the air who grins at the camera as if to say, see how talented I am? And then the mangled English of the Ukrainian translator felt a bit condescending— which it probably didn’t before the age of #ownvoices— and there is a token sexually promiscuous Gypsy girl. But even having said all that, it still has moments of brilliance. I’m glad I read it.

This might be my favorite moment in the book: Sasha, the Ukrainian translator, is narrating after they’ve made some new realization about the past: We roosted for several moments, and then we both laid on our backs, and the grass was like a bed. Because it was so dark, we could see many of the stars...we talked for many minutes, about many things, but in truth, I was not listening to him, and he was not listening to me, and I was not listening to myself, and he was not listening to himself. We were on the grass, under the stars, and that is what we were doing.

sdcox's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad medium-paced

3.75

I understand why this book is acclaimed. It had it's moments. Will say...if it wasn't the only thing I had to read on a 2hr train ride...I'm not sure I would've gotten past page 30. I was confused by the set-up...understood by page 100 (that's not a rave review). Once it got into the meat, liked the characters more and there were some really engaging and emotionally haunting moments. They were worth reading that far. Will be leaving this book in the UK airport for someone needing something to read. Who knows, it might speak to them.

gadicohen93's review against another edition

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5.0

A strange book. Intermittently hilarious and tragic. I cried, and I laughed. This has only happened when reading very few other books, some inferior, others on the same level of innovation and ravishing emotion.

If you necessitate a motive to examine this volume: It was comic. ~~Scratch that~~: It was comic, and completely, utterly draining. Poignant. Honest in the most dishonestly clever way.

Perhaps that is why it is called Illuminated. By the end we will see Alex in all of his glorious multifaceted complexity, and we will understand why the heroes’ ancestors did what they did and yearned for their children to know this, too. Everything does get more illuminated as the story moves on. Perhaps this is a story of illumination—of remembrance, really, which is the sixth sense of the Jew. Perhaps this is simply a story of Jewish mysticism and storytelling (but it is not, no it is not,) a story of pervasive knowledge in the face of death and violence and ignorance.

But it is not only that.

I wanted to finish this book knowing what Everything was. Perhaps that is why Jonathan left us on a cliff. He set a trap for us. He knew we’d want to know, and that we’d buy his book wanting to know and read it wanting to know and love it wanting to know, until he would make sure that we’d be coming back for more. Wanting to know.

This is a conversation between two heroes that we want to know, from head to toe. Read it for ~~two~~ scratch that, three reasons: It’s hilarious, it’s heartrending, and it will leave you wanting illumination.

Wanting in a good way, that is.