1 Star

This review contains spoilers. They are not hidden because I feel people should be forewarned about this book.

Can I give a book zero stars?? Because there was not a single thing that I liked or even could tolerate about Everything is Illuminated. This just might make my top ten worst books I have ever read list.

The premise sounded good: a young man going to the Ukraine to find out what his grandfather went through during WWII and ending up going through his own journey of self discovery. It was supposed to be loosely inspired by Foer's own journey. I expected an emotional, culturally rich historical fiction. It was short; I thought I would be able to read it in a weekend. Instead I had to drag myself through it.

I immediately had no idea what was going on. Far from anything being illuminated, things just got murkier. It felt more like having a sack thrown over my head, being shoved into a van, driven around by a maniac, then having said maniac demand I provide detailed directions for the route he just drove. This book was a colossal mess! The characters were all obnoxious. The plot was chaotic disaster. And the author put so much effort into trying to make impressive stylized writing that he forgot to actually write the book.

After much confusion, I did at least figure out the the story had three segments. The first is the main events of the story narrated by young local, Alex, who is supposed to be acting as guide to the main character. His sections were the most over the top in terms of desperately trying to be original and hyperbolized stylization (which just turned into bombastic mangling of the English language). It felt like maybe, those were supposed to be some comic relief, but it was mostly just exhausting.

The second thread is the main character, Jonathan Safran Foer, writing a heavily fictionalized family history. This was very confusing because most of it was about several generations ago starting in 1791 and not about his grandfather as the synopsis would lead one to believe. In fact WWII was barely even mentioned until about half way through the book. The other very confusing part, if you did not catch it is that the main character has the exact same name as the author. No, it is not a memoir or even an embellished truth. Apparently Jonathan(the author) did take a trip to the Ukraine to find out about his family history but did not learn anything and certainly did not experience the events that Jonathan (the character) did in this book. So what was the point?? How preposterously pretentious do you have to be to write a fictional version of yourself still with your exact name? And then go so far as to having the fictional narrator constantly refer to your fictional self as "The Hero"? I was literally cringing as I read this book.

The third thread are letters from Alex to Jonathan (the character) discussing Jonathan's (the character) weird writing about ancestors. These letters are written after the events of the main story. They are filled with Alex's simpering gushes about how great Jonathan (the character) was and how great his writing was. Again, with the nauseating self-importance of Jonathan (the author). There are no responses included from Jonathan (the character); only Alex's side of the conversation is represented. The other annoying thing about those sections was that they went beyond foreshadowing to outright telling what was going to happen in the main story. Then you have live through the chaotic retelling of it knowing exactly how it would turn out.

I did not like a single character in this book. Between the pompousness, the vulgarity, and the pandemonium of the plot, I just wanted it all to end. Jonathan (the character AND the author) was annoying. Alex was a ridiculous unreliable narrator. The grandfather was just weird. I initially felt some sympathy for Brod but quickly lost that under the growing suspicion that she just might have been sociopath and was at the very least extremely unstable.

This book is full of disturbing vulgarity and sexual crudeness. Not just swearing and sexual analogies but horrible sexual acts. I could not stand the pages and pages describing a twelve-year-old being objectified, lusted after by "every man in the village," and molested. Then it implies her rape at age thirteen followed by years of more disturbing sexual acts. I mean, who the hell puts a glory hole in their house?? And it makes it even more disconcerting when you think that those things were written by Jonathan (the author) writing as Jonathan (the character) both writing about their great-grandmother's sexual acts. And none of it seemed to have any point other than shock value.

There were many historical anachronisms, no richness of historical detail, no true emotion, and no real humor. On top of that, this book had some of the worst dialogue I have ever read. Much of it was done in paragraph. The sections of the fictionalized family history had the dialogue in italics for some random reason and no quotation marks. Alex's sections had the dialogue crammed together in paragraph back to back without saying how was saying what. So it just clumped together into this huge mess. Most of those conversations were between Jonathan (the character) and Alex in English and then between Alex and his grandfather in Russian (although these parts were written out in English as well). So it resulted in these huge run-on conversations all stuffed into single paragraphs. I was going to include an example, but I just cannot bring myself to type it all out.

Unfortunately, I do not understand what was supposed to be emotionally moving about this story. Yes, the scene at the climax in and of itself was tragic but it felt as chaotic and poorly written as the rest of the story. You can tell it was supposed to be this profound illuminating twist (and obviously it was to a lot of other readers given the high ratings and gushing praise), but it left me feeling nauseated and utterly repulsed. It felt like an exploitation of the Holocaust for the sake of fleshing out the book and purposefully trying to manipulate people's emotions.

I admit I had to skim so parts. It was that or completely DNF it. If this book had not been given to me, I would most certainly not have finished it. It was terrible in its entirety. The whole book felt pretentious and was a study in trying waaaaay too hard to be artsy. It was disturbing. It glorified vulgarity. It was written by someone who apparently thinks themselves far more clever than they actually are. Jonathan (the author) was trying so hard to be clever and witty and the result was a disorganized, disturbing disaster. Usually I try not to bash authors even when I do not like the book, but given the whole making-yourself-a-fictional-character-and-having-the-narrator-call-you-The-Hero thing, I do not feel the least bit guilty about it.

I would not recommend this book to a single person. Ever.


RATING FACTORS:
Ease of Reading: 1 Star
Writing Style: 1 Star
Characters: 1 Star
Plot Structure and Development: 1 Star
Level of Captivation: 1 Star
Originality: 1 Star

There is saying that war is never good, peace is never bad.

This is what I was reminded of as I read through this nearly perfect book. Etched in memory is how those who survived the Holocaust are still living with their stories. Tales to tell so that the world never forgets what was done to them.

Time is a capsule in this book as narratives are switched and three stories travel back and forth across centuries.
As we embark on this journey, the protagonist leaves on a quest to find the woman who saved his grandfather from the Nazis.

Everything is Illuminated is about the horrific tales of the atrocities of Nazi invasion & the mass extermination of towns and races, about one such sole survivor in an uninhabited town picking collectibles from the remains. The writing captures the betrayal, guilt and love which is unpeeled before our eyes.
This book is incredibly quotable and will intermittently make you laugh and cry and feel the tenderness of love. It holds so much between its pages that it’s almost impossible to truly express how it beautiful and heart wrenching it is in mere paltry words.

Thank you Jonathan for gifting me three of the most beautiful characters ever, whose tenderness and pain has altered me forever. Thank you for gifting me the story of Brod, a girl who’s a genius in sadness. Who discovered 13 forms of sadnesses and whose life was a slow realization that the world was not for her, and that for whatever reason, she would never be happy and honest at the same time. She felt as if she were brimming, always producing and hoarding more love inside her. But there was no release.

This gets an extra star for a truly funny gag that carries the book for the first fifty or sixty pages. That's surprising and impressive mileage for a simple bit (the narrator, a non-native English speaker, relies heavily on a thesaurus, so that "a hard journey" is "a rigid journey"), but after it wears off -- grinding agony.

Foer wants to be Gabriel Garcia Marquez, but his magic is insipid and his realism is lazily dishonest. He consistently goes for an easy lie over a more complex truth. For example, near the end the hero's grandfather is talking to a statue, and the statue tells a story about a couple living near a waterfall. At first the wife hates the constant noise. Over time she gets used to the sound, until finally she can't hear it at all. She dances and splashes in the falls, completely deaf to the roar. The metaphor is that parents eventually get over the death of a child, and that's essentially true, but it's made dishonest by Foer's lazy cuteness. When you're inside washing dishes maybe you don't hear the waterfall anymore, but if you go up and splash in it, it's deafening.

The cuteness crops up constantly ("first they had meetings every day, then every other day, then every other every other day"). At best I could imagine Peter Faulk reading it to me a la Princess Bride, but even that was an effort to keep up and eventually some piece of repulsiveness would shatter the illusion. All this cuteness, and all this dishonesty, could possibly be overcome, if only the story was good. But it's not. Foer builds up some suspense by withholding information and other cheap trickery, but there's nothing up his sleeve. By the time the big illumination finally comes, we've already pretty much guessed it. This book is all style, no substance, and other than the one great gag, the style isn't very good.

Gimmicks as substance.

A show off. He even named one of his characters Jonathan Safran Foer.

It is like he sees Haruki Murakami juggling five bowling pins and he says he can do that too, so he juggles five bowling pins with ease. Then he sees Ernest Hemingway juggling ten bowling pins and he says he can do that too so he juggles ten bowling pins and he even smiles while doing it. Then he sees Gabriel Garcia Marquez juggling fifteen bowling pins and he says he can do that too, and he does it. Then somebody says no one has juggled twenty bowling pins before, ever, and he says he can do that too and he shows us how.

Jonathan Safran Foer, the author, not the character, was only 25 when this book was published in 2003 to critical acclaim. I haven't seen the movie, but my copy says it is now a motion picture starring Elijah Wood. I wonder as what? Jonathan Safran Foer, the character, or Alex, the young Ukrainian translator whose mangled English can make you both laugh and cry?

Marvelous find, again, from the 1001 Books list.

Yiiikes. This book definitely did not live up to its reputation. I am emphatically not a fan.

First, I'll start with the good. I found the mangled English from Alex/Sasha to be humorous and a good comic relief to the story, especially the parts that were obviously from the thesaurus that Jonathan gave to Alex/Sasha (using rigid instead of hard, for example). There were elements of the magical realism that were endearing and clever. The way the stories wove together was compelling and it also helped move the story along.

OKAY SO NOW FOR THE BAD, and there is A LOT OF IT MY FRIENDS.

I was n  disgustedn by all of the sexualization of extremely underage children. It is downright impossible to "have an affair" with a ten-year-old, as Foer suggests that Safran being raped by older women are affairs or escort services. It's rape. It's child sexual abuse. It's molestation. It is most certainly not making love or having an affair. It doesn't matter how cutesy the town is and how quirky their customs are - it's wrong and I hated, hated, hated reading about it in such lackadaisical terminology. Further, one is not "made a woman" when she is raped, as Foer writes in his book multiple times. It is made worse by the fact that Brod is TWELVE YEARS OLD when she is raped. SHE IS A CHILD. Being raped does not suddenly turn a twelve year old into a woman and using that innuendo to describe a rape is irresponsible and disgusting. Also, the pages of the description of the Trachimbrod day and everyone wishing they could sleep with her and how beautiful she is and how they are all imagining that they are having sex with her was deeply disturbing, because, again, she's TWELVE. The shtetl is apparently full of pedophiles.

The way women are written is disappointing and flat. Firstly, there are no main female characters. Brod is the closest we get. The females in the book are mainly written to show more of the male characters. They are heavily sexualized or they are given horrific and tragic ends - yes, I know that it's the Holocaust - but they're not even really given stories or personalities or hopes or dreams. They're given a name, they're immediately cheated on, they're impregnated and then they're brutally killed and their death is more about the death of their baby than about their own death. It was horrifying and brutal, which I think was the intention, but it also could have been far more tragic if the women were written as people instead of as objects.  

I found the sex scenes to be incredibly vulgar and crude. I am by no means a prude (romance novels are my go-to books), but this was just too much. All of the talk of semen and tits and orgasms made me gag constantly. There was so much sex in a book about a man in search of the woman who saved his grandfather from the Holocaust. There was so much rape, as well. It was all just icky and unnecessary.

Finally, I hate that I don't know what's autobiographical and what isn't. Jonathan Safran Foer is the author and the main character? And I don't know how much of it is his true experience? And I don't know how much of what he wrote about Brod (his great-great-great-something Grandmother) and Safran (his grandfather) is true (including the rape and all of the sordid details of Safran's hundreds (???) of sexual partners (in his seventeen years?? Although, I guess if you start getting raped (or "having affairs" as Foer puts it) when you're 10 years old...). I don't know if Alex/Sasha truly existed, or his grandpa, or if his grandpa's act that is revealed in the last few chapters is true. It feels wrong to criticize plot points that may have actually happened, and I think therein lies one of the great flaws of the "autobiographical fiction." It's impossible to criticize truth, but if you're unsure what is true and what is fiction, the fiction stands to be protected as well.

Oh, also, I was very confused by the last few chapters of the book.  Why did Alex/Sasha force his father to leave? Why did the grandpa kill himself, but write a letter to Jonathan? Why did Alex/Sasha and Jonathan agree to stop writing to each other?

The gut-tickling malaprop voice of Alex, bragging falsely (but without a trace of guile) in a broken idiolect that suggests computer translation gone awry, is worth the price of admission all by itself. Sadly, the rest of the book -- much of it strung out in unimaginative flashback episodes -- is a turgid, half-baked mess. Reading just Alex's bits and ignoring the rest would be a bit like picking out all the chocolate chips from a bag of trailmix...but that may be the best way to snack here.

Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated (Dutton, 2002)

My, what a clever novel!

In any case, that, I imagine, is what Jonathan Safran Foer kept saying as he was writing this. And really, much about it is clever. The comparisons to A Clockwork Orange are completely unwarranted, as Alex, Foer's Ukrainian hero, destroys the English language in a quite different way than does Burgess' Alex. (A less politically correct but more conceptually accurate comparison would be Charlie Chan, as written by Earl Derr Biggers.) Foer's intertwining of stories is also quite clever, and his use of the two narrators to tell the main storylines.

However, with all the cleverness going on, Foer seems to have forgotten in many places to actually insert a novel. Threads pick up in odd places and then die with no fanfare, never to be resurrected again; the story has holes without being told an enough of an impressionist way to allow the reader to fill in enough blanks; the characters are obviously there as vehicles to carry off the cleverness, instead of being fully-realized human beings. In other words, this is a linguistic roller coaster, not a novel.

Not to say Foer doesn't write well when he forgets about the tricks and applies himself. Especially in the novel's last eighty pages, there are scenes of great beauty and tragedy that are conveyed in powerful manner that make the reader sit up and take notice. (The emotionl impact of every last one of them is dramatically undercut by Foer's following each with a needlessly scatological and/or pornographic piece of attempted humor, each of which fails because of its positioning, but the tragic pieces themselves are extremely well-written.) Unfortunately, these scenes are all too few. One of them is going along swimmingly until he decides to interject a Rick Moody-esque three-page unpunctuated sentence. Horrid. (And a trick he repeats a couple of times afterwards, also throwing in run-on words. Even more horrid.)

The book is billed as a comedy, and Foer tries to carry it off as such, but when the finest-written scenes are those of tragedy, it's hard to call it a success as attempted. Foer has the makings of a fine dramatic writer, once he gets away from being so consciously clever. **

Tiresome and overblown. Some really good lines, though.

Overall, it wasn't worth the energy to insult...it wasn't good enough to enjoy and praise...it's one of those cases where I simply do not care.

If you're familiar with my taste, and share it, you're not going to be sorry for passing this one up. Tedious, lumpen thing. I've eaten gnocchi with more savor.

Bah!
Dove dovrebbe far ridere riesce solo ad irritare e dove la storia e i personaggi e i dialoghi dovrbbero facilmente far piangere riesce a malapena ad annoiare, ma non del tutto: un po' irrita pure.
Insomma, un romanzo sbagliato in tutto e per tutto.
O sono sbagliato io, in tal caso mi rimetto alla volontà popolare e ammetto di non essere all'altezza di cotanto genio e buonanotte.

Holy God. This book is so awful. I'm not done with it yet, but I hate it so much, I have to begin ranting now. You may be wondering, if I hate it so much why am I finishing it- I just have to- it's an OCD thing.

First off, I think I know what the major problem comes down to. Somebody gave this guy way too much praise in his creative writing 101 class. The words do string together in almost iambic pentameter kind of musical fashion, so I can see how the average english teacher used to reading papers that include "lol" and "in conclusion I hope I get an a" would literally cream themselves over this guy. That, however is where it ends.

Where to begin? The characters are not likable and they don't develop through the story at all. In fact, you can't even really figure out why they would even be interested in each other. There's Jonathan himself, who just bumbles through story in a very bewildered manner. Alex, who is a stereotype of a stereotype. Grandfather, whom you can't even figure out what he matters to the story. Augustine, whom I think may have a traumatic brain injury, but they never really get into that. The dog was cool though, I guess.

The worst part about it though is that it is filled with non dramatic suspense that just leaves you screaming inside for the author to get on it with it. Then of course there are the endless would-be philosophical profundities such as "Once you hear something, you can never go back to the time before you heard it." Even Yogi Berra would've slapped this guy in the head. I literally wanted to rip the pages out every time he spat forth one of those gems. The part where they actually meet "Augustine" is so ridiculous and non-sensicle, that had this not been a library book, I really might have thrown it out a window. Had I bought it, it would have given me great pleasure to tear it apart upon finishing, but in retrospect, I am more glad that I did not contribute a dime to this author.

Don't be fooled, this is not a novel. This is a collection of short stories that have little if anything to do with each other. The only saving grace was that you could skip through some of the more tedious flashbacks, because Alex would sum them up in the "current" story. It's almost as if the author knew what he was writing would make no sense, so he saw fit to interpret it in a way that your high school English teacher would've rambled on about for hours.

I know many people loved this book and I say, hey to each his own, but really I urge you take a second look. Never loving anything, but the idea of loving something, the colcher with the blade in his head, Saffron as ten year old turning on old widows because of his Bob Dole arm. What the hell is this guy talking about???? This book does not posses the intelligence you think it does. I promise.

I could go on and on about how what is clever at 25 grows less so as we age, about how metafiction resonates more with young men who have yet to face the issues that do have enduring meaning in life (durational love, children, divorce, death), about how tapping into the Holocaust for emotional weight seems increasingly to be cheating. But enough. There are already mixed reviews that discuss the limits of this novel. Read those. Smart but not especially emotionally or psychologically interesting.