No, not clever at all. Just a very simple trick: pick up a thesaurus and change a few verbs and adjectives in such a way that their usage becomes absurd or silly. What would have been clever is listening carefully to real-life people trying to cope in a foreign tongue, then create a character who uses the kind of crude, unnuanced language that you get as a result. I would advise Foer to get up from behind that desk and do some serious travelling (abroad) - stay in (youth) hostels: they are a treasure trove of funny English. So much for the main ploy of this book. As for the storyline, I "close ranks with" (how's that for a Foerism?) Steve and Nils Samuels (both: three stars) : take a look at their excellent reviews.

Signor Jonathan Safran, mi facci il piacere…


Qualsiasi domanda mi faccia sul perché questo romanzo sia stato scritto e scritto a questo modo mi costringe a darmi risposte che fanno a pugni con la teoria della libertà di un artista e a maggior ragione di uno scrittore, la cui libera espressione ha pochissimi limiti materiali (una tastiera o un penna ) che affliggono le altre arti: spaziare nel tempo e nello spazio è una bazzecola, poi.
Ma credo che ci siano dei limiti invalicabili a cui ci si può approcciare con intelligenza e soprattutto pudore.

Sulla quarta di copertina , a parziale "illuminazione", c’è scritto a caratteri bianchi, corpo 18 su carta ocra gialla ” E se dobbiamo batterci per un futuro migliore, non dobbiamo conoscere il nostro passato e riconciliarci con esso?”
Che cavolo ( mi astengo dal turpiloquio)di senso ha questa frase trattandosi di un argomento con cui non puoi assolutamente riconciliarti? Mica si parla di un’analisi da un consulente di matrimoni andati a catafascio. Parla dei delatori goyim ucraini ( ma li possiamo ritrovare in tutta Europa dei tempi e qualcuno comincia a fare a capolino oggi: cambiato bersaglio – neri, muslmani e clandestini- ma stessa pulsione) al tempo dell’avanzata nazista, di quelli che non solo per salvare la vita denunciavano l’amico ebreo con cui avevano condiviso tutto.

Alex senior è un nonno simpatico oltre a essere copratogonista della inconsistente narrazione.
Così ce lo fa lo scrittore ebreo americano in cerca del suo di nonno, sfuggito in tempo dalla tenaglia nazista e goyim da un villaggio ucraino, di cui si sono pure perse le tracce nelle mappe.
Ce lo fa simpatico tanto da volerci commuovere con la sua tardiva espiazione per “epistola” allo stesso scrittore.
E il tutto è un mero esercizio di scrittura che meritava argomenti di ben altra leggerezza dell’essere ( tanto per citare il da lui citato, nel titolo, Kundera, altro sopravvalutato ).
Passi il divertente carteggio di Alex junior, nipote del senior, con lo stesso scrittore: è un “picciutteddu” all’oscuro di tutto quel popò di vergogna, così che l’odissea alla ricerca del villaggio è spassosa ma tirata per le lunghe è stucchevole.
Come stufa, a breve raggio, tutta la rievocazione storico lirica dell’albero genealogico da cui discenderebbe Safran l’americano.
Un libro inutile. Neanche blasfemo perché non ha la grandezza malefica della blasfemia.

P.S. A tratti mi ha ricordato la filosofia sottesa a quello stupidissimo e mediocrissimo film di Benigni: La vita è bella.
“Mi faccino il piacere”.

2.5 stars - It was alright, an average book.

This was Jonathan Safran Foer's debut novel, and it showed. There were parts that shined enough that I will definitely be picking up other books by him in the future, but the execution of this one unfortunately made for an irritating reading experience. What will bring me back to his writing is that there were several beautiful quotes/passages, and the author effectively evoked both humor and sadness.

I absolutely loved Alex's character and found his struggles with the English language to be very endearing and charming. In general the modern day story-line was by far the most interesting. Regrettably, Alex is only present for about 1/3 of the book and the other characters and time frames were far less intriguing.

Unfortunately, there were numerous story-lines and several different narrators that resulted in a disjointed, and frequently confusing, mess of a story. The reader jumps around so much that it is difficult to get attached to most of the characters, and engagement in the plot is delayed for the majority of the book as a consequence.
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Favorite Quote: Everything is the way it is because everything was the way it was.

First Sentences: My legal name is Alexander Perchov. But all of my many friends dub me Alex, because that is a more flaccid-to-utter version of my legal name.

There are obstacles to enjoying this book. They are worth overcoming.
Ground rules:
1. Do not, do not, do not read the blurb, or the effusive quotes all over and inside the damn book. They will make you hate the author before you have even begun.
2. If you are not Jewish you will likely be dismayed by the insularity of the first few chapters. Persevere.
3. The 'cute' mangled English does border on tiresome, but generates scattered lols and more importantly lends poignancy later on.

It's a patchwork of bright, romantic, experimental, expectation-defying images.

I didn't like the self-righteous tone that develops later, leaning on atrocity for gravitas. The ending for me was murky. Overall though the patchwork is well crafted; woven together with no itching edges. Enough to conjure a magical feeling and make you care enough to immerse in it to the end.

Compro muchos libros, pero suelo comprar lo que yo llamo "apuestas seguras", autores que ya sé que me gustan o autores que (por varias razones) intuyo que me van a gustar. 'Todo está iluminado' lo compré porque el amarillo fluorescente de la portada me sedujo, y ahora puedo decir que el dinero que gasté en este libro fue el más malgastado de mi vida, el que me dolió más haber gastado. Para mí, 'Todo está iluminado' ejemplifica a la perfección todo lo que está mal en la literatura contemporánea: voluntad de ser excéntrico sólo por ser excéntrico, más interés en construir personajes originales (y excéntricos) que personajes de carne y hueso, alta pretenciosidad y muchas ganas de ser considerado como un vanguardista reformulador de la literatura contemporánea, un interés desmesurado por la forma y un olvido descarado para intentar dotar de consistencia el fondo, otra dosis más de alta pretenciosidad, etc. Pero antes que nada narcisismo, un narcisismo tan abrumador que me daba náuseas. Sí, odio con todas mis fuerzas este libro.

I disliked the character named "Jonathan Safran Foer" and I cannot stand when authors make themselves the heroes of fiction. You made up the story, you can't make up a name for the character? The ESL narrator Alex is the reason I like the book at all. He probably would have been even better if I hadn't seen Borat. He writes like Borat speaks, especially in the beginning of the book. But he is generous and grows emotionally, whereas JSF is snide and self-involved. It seems to me that many contemporary authors, mostly of the young man with interesting glasses variety, are far too pleased with themselves, and it affects their work negatively. If you are the most interesting thing about the book you wrote, that doesn't say much for your imagination, does it? Can't we all imagine characters more interesting than ourselves? Perhaps these authors were praised too much as children and didn't have to pretend they were someone else.

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.

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 picaresque interchange between youths is like a more irreverent' albeit magic-natural take on Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer. The imperfect prisms, the barriers of language of history and the imagination all these tools of literary alchemy are proudly on display. It attempts to hide the real theme of pathos inherent in all immigrant stories, & that the reader desires desperately to unearth it like nothing else. (Ingeniously, in EiI, a potato falling to the ground becomes a thing of singular beauty. The writer simply must get props poor lathering up this sad story that includes the Holocaust with joyous amounts of high-grade and universal ripoaring comedy. One of the ten most important novels of the new millennium. And its rich; exhilarating; it has balls. It is fresh prose-like-a-rose and exhibits one intuitive, clever, downright beautiful structure. With its proud badges of a first--not to mention major) literary novel audaciousness it is a wondrous, always necessary!-- version of the Don Quixote legend. & you will definitely carve out something in your busy schedule to complete it. And, like me, somehow I really crave for a sequel to this, which I very rarely do, you will think the same.

"Everything is the way it is because everything was the way it was." 145

Mixed feelings about this novel. Overall, I liked it and would recommend it to any fan of literary fiction, Jewish history, history in general, and genealogy. It's very different from the film, which slices out at least one-half of the novel: the backstory. The film is a well-done "road movie" set in the Ukraine and following the three main characters, Alex, Alex's grandfather Sasha, and Jonathan, as they search for the elusive town of Trachimbrod. The novel, however, is less focused on the interaction among these three characters and their actual voyage. It jumps back and forth between the present day (post-search), told in letters between Alex and Jonathan, and the 1700s, leading up to the early 1940s, when the town's people were destroyed by Nazis.

The most captivating character, in my opinion, was Alex. The letters he writes to Jonathan in his just-learning-English style are hilarious, insightful, heartbreaking. I adored him. Unfortunately, he is only present in about one-third of the novel. There were times when I was incredibly annoyed to have to leave the present day and continue with the 1700s backstory, which was just not as interesting. Much of the backstory seemed to rely on characters who were outlandishly quirky, but not in genuine or endearing ways, and Safran's endless sex scenes began to bore me and trivialize the rest of the story. I wanted the novel to focus on the three main characters, their enlightenment/illumination, and their relationship.

But still, it's a great book and it deserves its accolades.

ისეთი წიგნია, აი, არც ტელევიზატორის ხმა რომ არ უნდა ესმათ ყურთა შენთა მისი კითხვის დროს და არც გარეშემომყოფთა ყაყან-ღაღადი, შენთვის, ედვანსირებულად უნდა იკითხო დღეყოველ, სანამ დასასრულს მიადგები და საფრანს მადლობაც უნდა გადაუხადო (ჯონათან, „მოუხადო“ თუ „გადაუხადო“? ეს ორი სულ მერევა), ასეთი იუმორისტულ-დამაბნეველ-ოდნავდამღლელ-ლამაზ-სევდიან-ტრახიმბროდული და კმასაყოფელი რომანის დაწერისათვის.

სრულის სიწრფელით,
ლუკა

I hated this book, to be honest. Didn't care for the plot or the characters.

Half of the book was presented via one Ukrainian person's narration, which was painful to read because his English is poor. It got old really fast. Random sentence for example:

n  "It is now evident to me that he will become a very potent and generative man, and that his brain will have many muscles. We do not speak in volumes, because he is such a silent person, but I am certain that we are friends, and I do not think I will be lying if I wrote that we are paramount friends."n

The premise is that an American went to Ukraine to look for an old family connection. So it's that typical humorous road trip setup where the humor is pretty much "the population of this strange place is weird". I didn't find it funny. Perhaps because I'm Ukrainian? Ukrainian characters were all "exotic" caricatures, and it felt like being the butt of a joke without being realistic. For example, Sasha (who is from Odesa) says that Lviv is like New York because it has buildings as high as 5 or 6 stories. C'mon! No one would have said that because typical buildings developed under USSR in both Odesa and Lviv were 9 stories, some were higher, but in any case, they were the same. Not to mention I don't think anyone would reasonably liken that to NY.

The dialogues, which take up a large portion of the book, were also painful to read because it's an English speaker trying to communicate with those who know little English. So it's a bunch of "what? what? what?"

The other half of the book felt like a One Hundred Years of Solitude parody. A bunch of weird shit seemed to happen for the sole purpose of making the book "quirky". Well, it was quirky indeed. The main female character was also...