2.23.2011

Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer


Everything Is Illuminated is Jonathan Safran Foer's first novel. Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (Safran's second novel) was my favorite read of 2010 and of Foer's two works, I've got to say I enjoyed his later work more than his first. However, that's not to say Everything Is Illuminated should be missed. Like EL&IC, this is a truly powerful story that I won't soon forget.

Foer has a knack for creating unique and memorable characters. In Everything is Illuminated we meet Alex, a Ukrainian who struggles to speak English (he tells us "my second tongue is not so premium"), yet acts as a translator for the character named Jonathan Safran Foer - a young American Jew in search of a woman, Augustine, who may have saved his grandfather from the Nazis. Alex offers a lot of comic relief, as his spoken English sounds more like a misplaced thesaurus than the colloquially spoken English Americans often hear.

Foer combines a few different stories into this one book - that of Alex and Jonathan, as narrated by Alex and his broken English, and their search for Augustine and also the story Jonathan the character is writing. Then there are a series of reflective letters between Alex and Jonathan throughout. The novel as a whole evoked many different emotions, particularity the story the character Jonathan Safran Foer is writing that centers around Brod. It's both beautiful and heartbreaking, detailing the life of a girl who struggles to find happiness:
She felt a total displacement, like a spinning globe brought to a sudden halt by the light touch of a finger. How did she end up here, like this? How could there have been so much - so many moments, so many people and things, so many razors and pillows, timepieces and subtle coffins - without her being aware? How did her life live itself without her?
Everything is Illuminated explores themes of identity and memory, and how our relationship with the past affects our everyday present. It challenges preconceived notions of what it means to be intelligent and also offers a bold vision of the Holocaust. It questions what love really means and asks how we know when it's real:
If there is no love in the world, we will make a new world, and we will give it walls, and we will furnish it with soft, red interiors, from the inside out, and give it a knocker that resonates like a diamond falling to a jeweler's felt so that we should never hear it. Love me, because love doesn't exist, and I have tried everything that does.
This book is anything but ordinary. As I mentioned earlier, it is a complex work of post-modern fiction, but well worth the effort. If you are looking for a book that will move you and encourage you to think about ideas in a new way, this is it.

Publisher: First Perennial, 2002

14 comments:

  1. After reading EL&IC I was interested to see what else JSF had to offer. Your review makes me want to check it out but not necessarily run to the store to pick get it immediately. I will make sure to put this on my list to check out.

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  2. Red, Definitely read it at some point, but I wouldn't rush out to get it. If I had read it prior to IL&EC I think I would have liked it more, but because I liked IL&EC so much I felt like I was a little let down. I've got high hopes for his third novel though! I feel like he was just starting to get in the grove with Everything Is Illuminated.

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  3. Also a great film adaptation was made - one for the list perhaps!

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  4. Great review, Brenna! I haven't read 'Everyting is Illuminated' but I read 'Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close' for book club many years back. It is interesting that the main character in 'Everything is Illuminated' is also called Jonathan Safran Foer :) Makes me wonder whether part of the book is Safran Foer's memoir :)

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  5. Great review - I have this on my American Classics list so will tackle it at some point. Its one of those books where I'm waiting for a time where I will be undistracted.

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  6. I love this book so much more than EL&IC. I just connected with this story so much more and was blown away by Foer's talent. I've recommended this book to countless friends and family members - and I've recommended teh film version, too. Definitely one of my favorite reads. Glad you enjoyed it.

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  7. I haven't read either of his books yet, but have them on my TBR list - so many books, so little time... EL&IC has been highly recommended but I just haven't got to it yet. The play with character and identity and memory you talk about sounds fascinating, I must get to these books soon!

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  8. Great review. That's a trendy thing to write novels and shoot films about "Collective Identity" but I like the idea that the narrator here seems to be struggling to belong to something. Like you said, it's a fresh spin on some older ideas, the ABC of originality

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  9. I started this one but couldn't finish it - there was just something I didn't like about it. I can't even explain what it was, it just wan't for me.

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  10. I keep seeing a copy of this at the used book store I frequent but have yet to commit to a purchase. I loved EL&IC but I just don't have time at the moment for new reads outside of reading groups so I've been putting it off. My boyfriend said the film was really good, so I feel like I should tackle the novel first. You finished it quickly so I might be able to squeeze it in. I feel like some of the subjects you touched on were also found in The History of Love (memory & identity). I don't know if it's particularly common for married writers to produce similar work. Hmm...

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  11. I want to read both of his novels, but I think I'll start with this one so I'm not disappointed. I'm glad you enjoyed it, even though the other one was better.

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  12. I read this one first and EL&IC second and definitely loved EL&IC so much more. I can't wait to read whatever he does next. I would also highly recommend the movie with Elijah Wood. I watched it after reading the book and I think it helped me appreciate the story a bit more. There were moments when the book seemed to loose it's flow and the film holds it together.

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  13. I prefer this to EL&IC, but truly, I love them both. And I've just seen your post about the movie - yeah, I wasn't a big fan :\

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  14. I liked EL&IC much better than Everything is Illuminated. I just found the latter to be so much fuzzier than the former and just didn't love the characters and the story as much.

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