TITLE: Everything Is IlluminatedAUTHOR: Jonathan Safran Foer
STARTED: July 15, 2008
FINISHED: July 23, 2008
PAGES: 276
GENRE: Fiction
FIRST SENTENCE: My legal name is Alexander Perchov.
SUMMARY: [From barnesandnoble.com] With only a yellowing photograph in hand, a young man -- also named Jonathan Safran Foer -- sets out to find the woman who may or may not have saved his grandfather from the Nazis. Accompanied by an old man haunted by memories of the war; an amorous dog named Sammy Davis, Junior, Junior; and the unforgettable Alex, a young Ukrainian translator who speaks in a sublimely butchered English, Jonathan is led on a quixotic journey over a devastated landscape and into an unexpected past.
By turns comic and tragic, but always passionate, wildly inventive, and touched with an indelible humanity, this debut novel is a powerful, deeply felt story of searching: for the past, family, and truth.
THOUGHTS: I enjoyed this book more for the writing style than the story or plot. Foer bounces between broken English, stream of consciousness, and straight-forward narrative. None of the jumps of style and voice lost me. In fact, they worked to tell the emotion of the story better than a "regular" narrative would.I found the relationships crafted in the book to be very interesting. Alexander is the focus of the book, and yet it is not his story. He is merely the medium for everyone else's interactions. The only storyline Alexander gets on his own is the relationship with his grandfather. That plot is secondary to the rest of the book and, yet, I found that relationship to be the most important. It was about the here and now, where every other relationship was in the past.
I am still debating whether or not I like this book. I enjoyed reading it. In fact, I looked forward to my nightly bedtime page turns because I wanted to know how it ends. But, most of this book as flitted away from me already. It was a good read as a read it, but not one that will stick with me for much longer.
RATING: 6/10 [Good]
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