| Title | Everything Is Illuminated |
| Author | Jonathan Safran Foer |
| Theme/Genre | Fiction |
| Synopsis | Everything is Illuminated is a masterfully, though irreverently told story—three stories really—that transcend a mysterious past, an uncertain present, and a maybe hopeless future. The basic story is that of an American author, Jonathan Safran Foer, who takes a trip to the Ukraine to do research on his family’s history, which includes a grandfather who survived a concentration camp and a mysterious woman known only from a photograph and a name: Augustine. This contemporary story is told by Alexander Perchov, a translator for Jonathan during his trip in the Ukraine. Alex’s English is broken and terribly wordy such that it seems he learned his English from an Oxford Dictionary. He uses English words appropriately only on the most distant rendering of the word’s meaning—this makes for some hilarious reading. Alex’s story recounts the events from the time he first meets Jonathan, the whole ‘tour’ of the Ukraine, and gives us a glimpse of the story’s “present tense”. The second vein of the story is a history of Trachimbrod, a small Jewish community from which Jonathan’s grandfather, and great-grandfather, and great-great-great-great-great grandmother came. A third, and very refreshing, aspect to the story is a discourse between Alex and Jonathan by letter. The reader sees only one side of this conversation, that of Alex’s letters written to Jonathan. Here we see the authors critiquing each other’s stories, but we also see through Alex’s letters that he is growing up, maturing, and starting to find his purpose in life. There is nothing typical about this story at all. The three stories told in this one novel do not, as so typically happens, come together at the end. Though, to say that there aren’t lines of intersection would be incorrect. The story is unique, often brilliant and at times strongly reminiscent of Dostoevsky in its emotional penetration. Where the basic ‘Ukraine tour’ portion of the story proves rich in comedy and satire, the story also reveals an Alex quickly finding himself and finding the author within. The history of Trachimbrod told by Jonathan brings the reader on a devastating journey from small town innocence to brutal destruction and death as well as a chance to witness some relationships that serve as brilliant canvasses for Foer’s wisdom and insight. |
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| Personal Notes | This is a book that I think all writers and lovers of literature should read.
It will challenge your assumptions of what a novel ought to be, and it will expose you to one
of America's bright new talents.
What does this book mean? To me this book makes the point, in a most profound way, that sometimes, just sometimes, all that we know, our lives, our world, our beliefs, what we consider to be real and normal and right, sometimes all of that simply falls apart. Sometimes there are no answers, reasons, or comforts-- sometimes the world opens up before your running feet and demands that you continue to run even as you fall into a bottomless pit. |
| Publisher | Houghton Mifflin |
| Date of Publication | 2002 |
| Sample Quotes | “I mount the autobus for an hour to work all day doing things I hate. You want to know why? It is for you, Alexi-stop-spleening-me! One day you will do things for me that you hate. That is what it means to be family.”
“AND AS WE ALL DO OR SHOULD KNOW, IT WAS ON THE SECOND DAY THAT THE LORD OUR GOD CREATED THE OPPOSING REGIONS OF HEAVEN AND HELL, TO WHICH WE AND THE SLOUCHERS, MAY THEY PACK ONLY SWEATERS, WILL BE SENT, RESPECTIVELY.” “The dream that we are our fathers. I walked to the Brod, without knowing why, and looked into my reflection in the water. I couldn’t look away. What was the image that pulled me in after it? What was it that I loved? And then I recognized it. So simple. In the water I saw my father’s face, and that face saw the face of its father, and so on, and so on, reflecting backward to the beginning of time, to the face of God, in whose image we were created. We burned with love for ourselves, all of us, starters of the fire we suffered—our love was the affliction for which only our love was the cure.” “He awoke each morning with the desire to do right, to be a good and meaningful person, to be, as simple as it sounded and as impossible as it actually was, happy.” “I want to express myself.” “the same is true for me.” “I’m looking for my voice.” “It’s in your mouth.” “I want to do something I’m not ashamed of.” “Something you are proud of, yes?” “Not even. I just don’t want to be ashamed.” And what about boys? Don’t you want them to think you’re pretty? I wouldn’t want a boy to think I was pretty unless he was the kind of boy who thought I was pretty. “She buried her head in her hands. But couldn’t it be just a bit more red? …She felt as if she were brimming, always producing and hoarding more love inside her. But there was no release.” “She loved herself in love, she loved loving love, as love loves loving, and was able, in that way, to reconcile herself with a world that fell so short of what she would have hoped for.” “Love me, because love doesn’t exist, and I have tried everything that does.” This is love, she thought, isn’t it? When you notice someone’s absence and hate that absence more than anything? More, even, than you love his presence? |
| Rating | 6 STARS |