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Jonathan Safran Foer: Everything Is Illuminated

J

jenn

New Member
i finished this last week and have spent the last few days just mulling it over in my head. it is a lot to grasp, and is challenging not only in it's content but the style in which it is written. i won't pretend to know all the literary tricks of the trade that jonathan safran foer has used, but i did enjoy how the book was separated into the two stories.
the protagonist, also named jonathan safran froer, has journeyed to the ukraine to search for the woman who supposedly saved his grandfather from the nazis. his companions on this trip are a young man named alex, alex's grandfather and his crazy dog, sammy davis junior junior. then there is the history of trachimbrod, the village of jonathan's ancestors. this story eventually leads us to his grandfather and his subsequent escape from the nazis during their invasion of the village.
first let me say how much i loved alex. his letters, while hilarious due to his love affair with his thesaurus, are also earnest and moving. i loved reading them and working out what he was really trying to say.
then there is the search for augustine. while told with a lot humour (the scene where jonathan is trying to order a vegetarian meal cracks me up) i still felt we were moving towards something horrible. i had a constant feeling of unease.
near the end when the two stories seem to intertwine, i would get a bit lost as to who we were talking about. was this jonathan's grandfather, or alex's or someone else? who is augustine? i would flip back and forth to try to pick up the thread of the story. i eventually stopped as i don't think it was so important that we understand who these things are happening to, just that they happened.
my favourite part of the novel was trachimbrod and it's strange, magical inhabitants. i loved reading their dreams. i felt transported into a place that was filled with eccentric, wonderful, and sometimes cruel personalities.
i would recommend this book to anyone who is willing to approach it with an open mind and an understanding that they may walk away not entirely getting it all. but that is ok, it is still beautiful to read. i look forward to reading foer's new novel, and i am curious to see how liev schrieber has made out adapting this for the screen.
 
I love experimental fiction. This was a great novel by Foer. Can't wait to read his next...
 
I really enjoyed the book too. I found the writing to be great. Some of it worked and some of it didn't but on the whole the prose was wonderful. The book is a real emotional rollercoster! One moment you are laughing and one moment you are crying. Good stuff :)

Jenn, in case you missed it: He has a new novel out called "Loud and Incredibly Close"
 
I just started this book yesterday and I must say I am enchanted. The style is unconventional, but I can see how using the traditional styles of storytelling would make this novel ...well...flat. Alex's contributions are hilarious and while a little confusing, are an integral part of the story. I have Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close waiting to be read, too, and I can hardly wait to see what he comes up with next.
 
Well I'm afraid I thought it was a rancid puddle of self-indulgent vomit. I gave up on it.
 
On the whole I thought it was a good book. I did enjoy Alex for about half of the book but his need for his thesaurus became a little tiresome by the end. Self indulgent maybe, but aren't most books to a certain extent.
 
blueboatdriver said:
On the whole I thought it was a good book. I did enjoy Alex for about half of the book but his need for his thesaurus became a little tiresome by the end. Self indulgent maybe, but aren't most books to a certain extent.
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Self-indulgent is ok if it's entertaining. I just thought this wasn't.
 
I'm with CDA on this. I just had a very frustrating week or so toggling between Everything Is Illuminated and a John Le Carre book (The Secret Pilgrim) that became a grinding bore 2/3 through.

Ugh. Everything is Illuminated. Okay, I could deal with Alex, even enjoy him a litte once I made the adjustment. But it's a big adjustment, and he's not all that amusing. And again, I know I'm starting a book with the old unreliable-narrator problem, which I'm getting bloody tired of. So that's two strikes against.

And then that impenetrable nonsense invented history story interspersed throughout is torture for me. The author throws about 30 names at you, it's all a huge jumble of nonsense and supposed myth passed down or invented. Who cares? It was like reading who begat whom for 30 pages, written by someone who wasn't sure. So I'm giving up. I suspect there's some heartwrenching moment near the end that 'makes it all worthwhile' but it's not for me.

In fact, I can safely say, so far I hate this book. Considering most books begin better (more proficiently) than they end, this doesn't look good.

Edit: Okay, I've just read the thread, after adding this comment, and I must say that jenn gorham's review makes me realize what a great contributor she could have been here. Although we disagree on this book, she may have helped me to get to another place with it. I'm not giving it another try, but it's good to hear a cogent, divergent point of view.
 
While I wouldn't say I loved this book, I far from hate it. I think the ending could have been better, it just ...sort of petered out.
 
novella said:
I must say that jenn gorham's review makes me realize what a great contributor she could have been here. Although we disagree on this book, she may have helped me to get to another place with it. I'm not giving it another try, but it's good to hear a cogent, divergent point of view.
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A little birdie tells me that jennashleagorspamzilla may have been notified about this particular comment....:D :D

You rock Novella....
 
I loved this book. The use of language takes a while to get into, though. I was okay with JSFbeing a character in his own book, because he just blended in the background for me. And it kinda slips out of my mind the fact he's writing it, too. :D

The Holocaust parts were disturbing.

By the way, they say JSF is also a character in his second novel, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.
 
I finished this book this afternoon, and I really cannot decide if I like this book or not. It certianly made me think - that's the only thing that I /am/ certain of.

It's fair to say that when I first began the book I hated it. I would have thrown it away without second thought if it hadn't been a Christmas present presented to me by my brother with a glowing recommendation. So I persisted through the confusing dialogue, strange writing style and bevy of completely forgettable names (this was a problem which plagued me throughout the entire novel).

I did warm to the book after awhile, however. Alex's narrative became humerous (yet slightly less so as the story wore on) once I got used to having to interpret the results of his rabid obsession with his thesaurus. The story of the history of Trachimbrod became interesting after flicking back countless times and becoming familiar with /some/ of the names, and even became my favourite parts of the book throughout the middle, although this changed drastically near the end. I still, however, could not get fully into it, which I think was the fault of the writing style - it really wasn't for me.

The thing that stops me from liking the book is the ending. The story, as cajunmama so perfectly stated, just sort of peters out into a confusing mess of nothingness, really. I expected that everything would become illuminated in the end, but in reality this is far from the truth. I didn't understand why the part about Jonathan's grandfather's life was put into the book - to be honest it bored me and just made the whole thing more of a muddle.

Some parts of this book are done really well and I loved - such as majority of the mid-section of the novel - and if only this quality had been sustained I'm sure that this would have become one of my favourite books of the year. But as it is, I was extremely disappointed by the ending and was never really into the book - it just didn't completely suck me in.

An interesting read, but Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close was far better, in my honest opinion.
 
jenn said:
i look forward to reading foer's new novel, and i am curious to see how liev schrieber has made out adapting this for the screen.
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I haven't read the book - but it is one I am going to read soon. I have seen the film and it is a wonderfully funny and bright film, despite the content. There are obviously some serious points, but the characters do shine through and it does not come across as a thoroughly depressing film by any means. If you like the book I would recommend the film, but I cannot say whether or not Liev Schrieber has done a good job as I haven't read the book yet. I usually do the whole book and film thing the other way around - so this will be interesting for me when I finally get around to reading it!
:)
 
i had a great deal of trouble with this book. to the point that i currently holds the #2 spot for books i didn't finish-- the other beinn "the shining" by stephen king because i was 12 and had just seen the movie. i found that the use of the language-- while cute at first-- became little more than aggrivating after a while, so i ditched it in favour of the in-between world of vikram lall.

i like a challenging read. i don't like a frustrating one.
 
I really loved this book, I just wish I understood it!

I was hooked from the beginning because I liked the unconventional writing style and semi-mythological Trachimbrod. I just found it a bit demoralising that there were so many deep menings I couldn't understand, especially towards the "end" which doesn't really 'illuminate' anything, as far as I can tell!

This seems to be a marmite kind of book: you either love it or hate it. The biggest bookworm I know read this, and could barely stand to finish it! Though I loved it, I found myself reading it purely for the lyrical quality rather than the story line...The most irritating thing about it was that it didn't seem to have any particular meaning or conclusion, it just came across as a stream of pretty words.

They were very pretty words though :)
 
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