Everything Is Illuminated

This was a HARD book to start. A few pages in, I didn't think I could read it. Once I realized that it was only about every third chapter where the character spoke like someone with a huge English vocabulary but didn't speak English as their native language, I got past that and was hooked by the story. Complex, human, insightful of horrors of WWII, a thought-providing story.

This book has some powerful images and occasionally powerful writing, but it is gratuitously difficult and obtuse. The different story lines, characters and locations (shetls) bear unclear and confusing relations to each other. The humor deployed against the Ukrainian characters is juvenile. One of the few redeeming qualities of the book is the rehabilitation of the Ukrainian characters over the course of the book into human beings, as opposed to the two-dimensional buffoons they start out as. The author also, despite his own father being from the real shtetl on which the fictional Trachimbrod is based, apparently does not know, or considers unimportant, the actual sequence of historical control (Polish, Soviet, Nazi) over the region (Eastern Galicia) between 1939 and 1942, when main story of the novel ends. My own family background is similar to the author's - my grandparents were Jews from Eastern Galicia, much of their families were wiped out in the Holocaust, and I have visited the area and my grandmother's shtetl in 1995 and 2003, with Ukrainian guides. Nobody should get the idea that the book is an accurate representation of the place, either in the last 30 years, nor exactly even during the war. Where are the Ukrainian militias? Jews living on after June 1941, until March 1942, as if the Nazis were nowhere to be seen, and the Poles were still fighting them? It had been under Soviet occupation since 1939, the Nazi occupation was immediate - accomplished in days - in June 1941 - and from that point until the last executions in 1943, it was only occupation, labor, transports and death. The author is entitled to write a book that uses fantasy and surrealism to tell a story that is brutally hard to tell directly, but getting the basic history wrong on a subject as sensitive as this does a service to no one.

Foer does nothing less than create a true work of literary genius in this book. When Foer says, "Everything Is Illuminated" he really means everything. All the loves and hates; all the lies and truths; all the fidelities and adulteries; all the deceits and deceptions; all the horrors and the ghosts; all the atrocities and the kindnesses, all these things, Foer illuminates for the reader.The premise of the book is that Foer's family was originally from a small town in Galicia, an area of Europe that was sometimes Poland and sometimes Austria and sometimes the Ukraine, depending on what year and who dominated the local geo-political scene at the time. Foer goes back to try and find the one person that saved his father's life.In the process, some very bizarre coincidences happen, the kind that only happen in the sadness of the truth of real life. And these horrible things, these haunting memories; are the things that Foer illuminates for the reader. This story is the one that unwinds like a snaky river running through a "Heart Of Darkness."And this is only the beginning. Foer uses one of the most unique literary styles in this book I have ever seen. He uses punctuation, cultural difference, ethnic strife, word combinations without punctuation; to make his point even clearer, and even more dramatic. The book is itself a work of art as well as literature.I cannot think of a reader that would not benefit from reading this book. Its impact cannot be underestimated. And it shall stand as one of the great creations of literature in the 21st Century.

This was a great book, so different that a lot of it got past me, and confused me. I’ll say the first 2/3rds was 5-stars and when the use of humor lessened the narratives suffered, so 4-stars. Powerful story and some of the writing and exposed ideas so spot on that a reader cant forget. The types of sadness, the book of dreams.

Good book

Like the new storytelling stile and the way of describing different and difficult relationships beetween people.

ユダヤ系アメリカ人のJonathan（作者と同名の人物）が、ナチスの虐殺から自分の祖父を救ってくれた女性を探しにウクライナへ旅する。現地通訳の大学生Alexとガイド兼運転手役の祖父、祖父の盲導犬（！）として同乗する犬Sammy Davis Jr. Jr.。この３人＋１匹が、今や地図上から消えてしまった町Trachimbrodを探す話。Jonathanが語るTrachimbrodを舞台にした彼の先祖の物語、その原稿を読んだAlexからJonathanに宛てた手紙、そしてAlexが語る彼らの道中記、という３つのパートが交互に語られる構成です。最初は、小難しい単語を間違って使うAlexのめちゃくちゃ英語に振り回されて（え、こんな意味あったの？みたいな感じで）辞書引きまくり。しかし、例えば「眠る」をmanufacture Z's、workをtoilなどと表現するAlex語が分かってくると、比較的楽に読めます。しかしそれでも、従来の小説作法とは一線を画した、従って従来のアメリカ文学を読みなれた身には読みにくい英語であることは、最後まで変わらなかったです。お話の前半は、ベジタリアンなユダヤ系アメリカ人と無邪気なウクライナ人たちの会話のすれ違いなど、カルチャーギャップに大笑い。後半の虐殺シーンの再現はかなり暗く、そしてラストは、なんだか観念的な終わり方で、いまいち腑に落ちない感じでした。でも、若い作者が書いた長編第一作ということで、まあこんなものかな？

One thing is clear: for both readers and critics, this is a Marmite-type book. People either love it or hate it. I happened to love it; I found it wonderfully well written and funny in some places, tragic in most. I don't mind admitting it made me cry, and I thought about it for a long time after I finished reading it. The fact that the writer was a mere boy (JSF was 21 when he published this, his first novel) made it, for me, an even more interesting read. For once, I thought the praise on the books's blurbs were absolutely right.However, I can also understand why people could hate this mixer-upper of a novel. It is experimental in places, some parts can feel pretentious and utterly pointless and they contribute nothing to the story (which is already so meandering, it can drive you bonkers). The book actually annoyed me at the very start, and in fact has two or three starts, all of them just as annoying, so kudos to JSF for keeping me reading! Plus, 'Everything...' has semi-magical realism strands, or is often simply plagued by juvenile exaggeration. Much of it is thoroughly unconvincing. You have to forever suspend your disbelief, both for the parts that happen in the present, and for the parts that happen in the distant past.The only sections where, sadly, no suspension of disbelief is required, are the events involving the Nazi extermination of Jewish people, and the clear indication that the Russians and the Ukrainians treated the poor Jewish folk no better. These parts are realistic and convincing and the story is told as tragically and as full-on emotional, I thought, as it ought to be.All in all, I reckon it's a miracle this novel got published, but I for one am very happy it did. It is good to see that intelligent, unusual, challenging books still get a chance in our commercial, saccharine, short-attention-span culture. 'Everything ...' is an uneasy but very worthwhile read.

We chose this book for our book club read this month. The book has good reviews and has won prizes. Unfortunately none of use were able to finish it. I found it really hard work to get into the flow. Having to re read all the sentences to work out what it meant did not make it a good read. Good luck to anyone else who tries.

I'm having a bit of difficulty getting into this book, but that's probably because I'm busy just now. So far, after just a few pages, there has been a most memorable piece of imagery, so I will certainly be trying again to read it, when things are more settled.