Reviews

Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer

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sdcox's review against another edition

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.