Everything Is Illuminated : A Novel
by Jonathan Safran Foer
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Book Summary Information
Author: Jonathan Safran FoerEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Published)
Format: Bargain Price
Published: 2003-04-01
ISBN: N/A
Number of pages: 288
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Book Reviews of Everything Is Illuminated : A Novel
Book Review: Life's quiet milestones
Summary: 5 Stars
I have no sophisticated view to add here, just a personal reaction to it: Started out watching it because there was not much else on TV and it was quirky enough to appeal so I stayed with it, and shortly became incrementally drawn into it. The oddball humor was refreshing and its twists and turns amusing but, at some point---I don't know exactly where---a vaguely distant background theme began to move to the fore. References to "WWII", "SS", "occupation" and related tidbits began to coalesce center-stage and, by the time the characters were approaching an eye-filling field of flowers, the mood had definitely changed. From then on, 60-odd year old history came wrenchingly alive, nuanced and affecting and, for this viewer, 'memorable'. How others will regard this film, I can't know, though I suspect older viewers' understanding may be deeper than that of younger ones. In any case, I was sufficiently drawn to this film to seek out my own DVD of it.
Summary of Everything Is Illuminated : A Novel
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.
The simplest thing would be to describe Everything Is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer's accomplished debut, as a novel about the Holocaust. It is, but that really fails to do justice to the sheer ambition of this book. The main story is a grimly familiar one. A young Jewish American--who just happens to be called Jonathan Safran Foer--travels to the Ukraine in the hope of finding the woman who saved his grandfather from the Nazis. He is aided in his search by Alex Perchov, a naïve Ukrainian translator, Alex's grandfather (also called Alex), and a flatulent mongrel dog named Sammy Davis Jr. Jr. On their journey through Eastern Europe's obliterated landscape they unearth facts about the Nazi atrocities and the extent of Ukrainian complicity that have implications for Perchov as well as Safran Foer. This narrative is not, however, recounted from (the character) Jonathan Safran Foer's perspective. It is relayed through a series of letters that Alex sends to Foer. These are written in the kind of broken Russo-English normally reserved for Bond villains or Latka from Taxi. Interspersed between these letters are fragments of a novel by Safran Foer--a wonderfully imagined, almost magical realist, account of life in the shtetl before the Nazis destroyed it. These are in turn commented on by Alex, creating an additional metafictional angle to the tale.
If all this sounds a little daunting, don't be put off; Safran Foer is an extremely funny as well as intelligent writer who combines some of the best Jewish folk yarns since Isaac Bashevis Singer with a quite heartbreaking meditation on love, friendship, and loss. --Travis Elborough, Amazon.co.uk
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