Rating: 
Summary: I LOVED THIS BOOK
Review: I first came across it through the excerpt published in The New Yorker last year. I found it excruciatingly funny then, and I eagerly awaited the opportunity to read the whole novel. Having now read it, I am even more impressed, particularly to find that it encompasses many more qualities than mere humor. It is beautifully written, deeply moving, highly original, and unforgettable.I am awed by the talent shown by an author so young. I am recommending it to all my friends.
Rating: 
Summary: Ugh
Review: The most notable aspect of the book is that a good portion of the book is narrated by a Ukrainian with an odd manner of speaking. He comments on Americans, their custome, and their pop culture, with a sincere but befuddled enthusiasm. Several times, it's revealed that the supposed author wants him to edit scenes calling the supposed author short, or foolish things he did. If it sounds familiar, it's because the comedic device is about the same as that used in the old TV sitcom "Perfect Strangers." It's well-done and amusing to read for a while, but ultimately I don't think it's nearly enough to hold a book together. Not to mention that I have a number of Slavic friends with varying commands of English, none of whom talk remotely like this... So there's more to the book than that - but it's easily forgotten. There's the author's fiction about his family, that's somewhere between self-parody and just bad, that I feel most readers will skim or even skip. There's writings on the Holocaust that, like most writings on the Holocaust, fall short of their huge ambition and becomes a re-setting of easily forgettable cliches. The human drama rang false.
Rating:
Summary: GENIUS
Review: Foer really is a genius. This is the best novel I've read in years. It's funny, it's sad, the writing is absolutely brilliant. It's inventive without being show-offy; it's smart without being smarty pants.I've never read anything like Everything Is Illuminated. I give it to friends just so they can feel what I've felt -- and so we can talk about all that the book stirs in one's mind. I will never forget this novel, and I can't wait until Foer writes another. READ THIS BOOK!! You'll be glad you did.
Rating:
Summary: Everything Is Relative
Review: Yes, it has been over-hyped. Yes, Foer is the boy wonder du jour, and no,this is not a novel that will make him immortal.
Yes, it is derivative, puerile, self-indulgent and even tedious. No, it is not boring, nor is it literary theft as some claim. Forget the hype, and just sit back and read. You will laugh and you will cry, and you will come away having gained some significant insight. What more can be asked of any novelist, let alone a first timer?
Rating:
Summary: GIVE ME A BREAK
Review: This is SO overrated that no amount of review could describe how much it misses the mark. Pass on this.
Rating:
Summary: sheer brilliance
Review: You sometimes wonder where the geniuses in our own lifetime are, when you read about Picasso painting a masterpiece at an extraordinarily young age, or musical prodigies like Mozart. Well, 24 year old Safran Foer is just that. Everything Is Illuminated is nothing short of brilliant: with superb writing and wonderful storytelling, the novel is vibrating with pure heart and soul. A true wonder of a book that everybody should read!!
Rating:
Summary: An extraordinary writer and book
Review: If you look at Foer's success on paper, I admit it, you want to hate the guy. He's had the literary world falling over itself to sing his praises. And he's only 25! I can see why there are resentful people out there.
But the truth is Everything Is Illuminated is an extraordinary work, for a first novel especially. I resisted buying the book until Foer's story about heart disease ran in the New Yorker a few weeks ago. It was so honest, so moving, I just had to read the novel. So many friends told me it's incredible. And it is. It really, really is. I read it practically in one sitting, staying up late into the night to finish. I was a zombie at work the next day. But I also couldn't stop thinking about the book.
While it's not perfect, it is a novel that you will not soon forget. It's impact is enormous: characters and feelings and stories within stories that will haunt you for weeks after you finish reading. The Alex story is hilarious. I scared people on the bus, I think, by maniacally thrilled laughter as I read these sections. The Trachimbrod sections pale in comparison to the bright glare of Alex's language, but they are moving and honest and deeply poignant. I know some readers have skipped over parts of this story. To me, it's the two together that make the book so wonderful.
Foer is without a doubt one of the most talented young writers out there. I wasn't much of a fan of Eggers and DF Wallace, and other pomo tricksters. There's plenty of slick writing here, to be sure. But Foer is honest and human in a way I didn't find in these other writers.
You should really check this book out, hype or no hype. The author's biography aside, the book stands strongly on its own, leaving you inspired and awed by this amazing young writer. I can't give it a higher recommendation.
Rating:
Summary: Oates is right....
Review: Jonathan Safran Foer must have been one of those creative, mercurial children whose imagination got him into a lot of trouble with his parents. As a first-time novelist, his depth, his imaginative glances at love and life, his use of language, his wit all lend to a prodigious talent. The first thing that attracted me to the book was its cover, black and white and graffiti-like, but the clincher that made me purchase the book was its glowing recommendations by some of my favorite authors: Russell Banks (THE SWEET HEREAFTER and AFFLICTION), Jeffrey Eugenides (THE VIRGIN SUICIDES), and Joyce Carol Oates, who says the most accurate statement about the author: "He will win your admiration, and he will break your heart," which he thoroughly does without fear and without trepidation. There are three main characters: the hero, also called Jonathan Safran Foer, who travels to the Ukraine in an attempt to find a woman who once saved his grandfather from the Nazis. The story uses several Jewish anecdotes, but it does not get bogged down in Holocaust miseries. The tone remains triumphant, even among such miseries, tears, and pain. Alex, Foer's Ukrainian guide, is the life of the story though. He starts out hilarious with his overly-enthusiastic thesaurus usage (exchanging "exhausted" for "fatigued"---I fatigued the phone book looking for the number---or "dub" for "call"---Do not dub me that!), but we slowly learn about his true heart and love for his family. The sections of the novel in which Alex must translate that Foer is a vegetarian and does not eat meat are hilarious. Finally, in a fantastical history that Foer tells in order to describe his family heritage, we meet Brod, whose father is not her father, who is the envy of her town, and who loves a man who beats her. The mood of the novel switches rapidly, through romance, comedy, tragedy, sentimentalism, self-indulgence, irreverance, wit, charm, and magic, but mostly, Oates's quote tends to be the most true: Foer will break your heart, but he will heal it as well.
Rating:
Summary: Not to be missed
Review: It's very rare to find a novel this good, no matter what the age of the author. I think that this one will be remembered as one of the classics of late-20th c. (or is it early-21st c.?) fiction. The style reminds me of Swift, or, more recently, of Garbriel Garcia Marquez or John Barthes. Foer takes on grand themes with irreverent humor and a sense of the fantastic. His imagination ranges wildly, but he never loses touch with the human. I am looking forward to reading whatever he writes next.
Rating:
Summary: I'm in love with Jonathan Safran Foer
Review: When I read a piece of this book in The New Yorker some months back, I found myself laughing out loud with delight. (At the time I had a Ukrainian boyfriend struggling with his English, so I found Alex's mixed-up language both incredibly accurate and very close to home.) But I wasn't delighted merely because the writing is so clever. There is also something refreshingly innocent about Foer's writing, something that feels very pure, very new, and, well, BIG. I thought, "Thank God...a real talent arrives!" And the book bears that out. I look forward to the career of Jonathan Safran Foer...my new literary crush.
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