Rating: 
Summary: Complex
Review: Some unnecessary complications, but what else is reading for?What else do you want?
Rating: 
Summary: highly problematic
Review: I know JSF is supposed to be the new "wunderkind," but I have to break away from the pack and say that "Everything is Exaggerated." The best things that can be said for Foer are that he is clearly both well-read and well-connected. First, part of this book is virtually lifted from the far-superior (and less-well-known in the US) _See Under: Love_ by David Grossman (an Israeli writer); it is virtually literary plagiarism. Second, with a brother who writes for The New Republic, Joyce Carol Oates as his writing teacher in college, and Dale Peck as a family friend, JSF starts with the benefit of being extraordinarily well-connected for his age in the world of the literati, which cannot help but play into his success. I don't begrudge him the latter, but think this is a clear playing out of the Yiddish aphorism, "you'd always rather have mazel (luck) than sechel (wisdom)." While JSF has clear potential to be a terrific writer, that potential is infrequently realized within the context of this book. He prostitutes the Jewish experience in Eastern Europe for his own gain by writing an account of a shtetl based on little research and much sarcasm. To someone who doesn't know anything about Jewish history in Eastern Europe, I am sure that JSF's rendering has the resonance of a Chagall painting. To anyone who does, it's a virtual Jewish minstrel show and degrades the history of the Jewish people in Eastern Europe. JSF, the satirical portrait of shtetl life has been done. The writer's name is Shalom Aleichem, and what made him so great was not only his language, but that even the most bitter elements of his portrayal were infused not by self-loathing, but by love. My favorite moment in the book does not rest on Alex's butchering of the English language, but rather on a passage in which one character recounts a massacre to Alex, who translates for JSF's character. This slow, unfolding portrayal of how history is created is terrific to read and watch. Unfortunately, it stands out amidst the rest of a book (and, truthfully, a writer) which takes itself far too seriously for what it has to offer.
Rating: 
Summary: Keeps getting better the more I think about it.
Review: I heard about this book from a little article in some book magazine. The author was supposed to be an amazing new talent who had just received a large advance for this book. I tend to doubt such reviews because frankly that's what is said about all new writers these days. After one page, I knew that I was reading something that would be unlike anything I'd ever read previously. Jonathan Safran Foer (also the name of a character in the book) has written a spellbinding account of one man's search for his Grandfather's hometown and the family that may have saved him from the Nazi's. I use the word spellbinding, not so much relating to the storyline (which is good,) but to the writing and language used. One of the main characters, Alex (Jonathan's guide and amateur writer), has a very poor grasp of English and tends to use large, unwieldy words while speaking and writing. This is one of the major highlights in this book, for Mr. Foer is able to use Alex's speech problems as humor. The book can be a bit difficult to follow at times as it changes narrator and time (it also tells the story of Jonathan's Grandfather chronologically every other chapter or so) but is well worth it. As my title says, the more I think about the book the better it gets. Highly Recommended
Rating: 
Summary: Everything Is Exaggerated
Review: Like many reviewers here, I fell in love with the short story that the New Yorker excerpted from this novel, and was subsequently disappointed to find out that that the book itself had little to add to the magazine piece. The real story ends is over by the middle of the novel, where the New Yorker excerpt ended. The rest is a predictable, overwrought mess, exploiting the shock value of the horrific atrocities that the Nazis committed on the Jews in the Ukraine in the early 1940's. As if to balance that grotesquerie, the author piles on some half-baked nonsense about how sexual intercourse creates bioluminescence that can be seen from space, padded with a treacly magical-realist history of his grandfather's village. The whole thing reads like a curdled mixture of Garcia-Marquez and Tom Robbins, with loads of gratuitous sex and cute two-dimensional ethnic caricatures straight out of a bad Chagall painting. In short, this seems to be the case of a very talented young writer who was pushed to do more than he should have. I look forward to more from J.S. Foer, but with a publisher who has the writer's best interests, and not just the marketing bottom line, at heart.
Rating:
Summary: Read it for what it is: great.
Review: There's a good reason that all of the reviews in the media have been so unbelievably praising of this book---calling it a work of genius. It is one! It's a shame that people get so jealous. So what? He's young? So what? He got a big advance? He deserves it! The guy wrote a great book, which I read in one sitting, and have since bought copies of for the people I most love. And they've loved it. I've talked about this book to just about everyone I know, and I've read a whole ton of reviews, and I've yet to encounter anyone who hasn't felt the way I did. Except for people on this site, of course, which makes me wonder what the motivations are.
Rating:
Summary: Best book of the year, by a long shot
Review: I would be very surprised and disappointed if this book doesn't win the National Book Award. The only other excellent book this year was Atonement, and that, of course, was by an Englishman. People speak of Everything is Illuminated as being an important Jewish book, but it's really an important American book. There have certainly been other good books published here this year, but nothing so audacious, nothing so new and true. Last year was Franzen's, and rightly so. He wrote the most ambitious, deeply felt novel in America. This year is Foer's.
Rating: 
Summary: American exceptionalism dressed as literature
Review: ... ...the American in this story is the "hero" not only in word but in deed. He becomes the voice of reason, of civility and civilization, the spokesman for "common decencies," etc., etc., while the Ukranians are hopelessly uncool, child-beating, anti-Semitic idiots. We are cajoled into feeling for them of course, but it's more a kind of paternalistic pity than genuine identification. Alex's English is not funny because the English language is the butt of the joke, ..., but because he is made into an ignoramus. He thinks Michael Jackson is cool while we Ivy League-educated Americans think Radiohead or some other such tripe is cool. The point where this caricature goes over the top is when Alex thinks that "War and Peace" are actually TWO separate novels by Tolstoy. Get it? "War" and "Peace"! Hardy har! Hilarious! Genius! This despite the fact that he knows Russian. This despite the fact that Russians and Ukranians, unlike their brain-dead American counterparts, actually have a profound love and respect for literature and poetry, and know much more about it (certainly of their own heritage) than Americans do. And their schoolchildren also had a much better grasp of science and math, at least during the Soviet period. ...
Rating:
Summary: An Inventive and Courageous Debut Novel, but...
Review: Much of the hype is justified. This is one of the most inventive anatomical novels I've read in recent years. There's a virtuosity in Jonathan Safran Foer's storytelling that will leave you breathless. JSF writes with elan and confidence that belies his age. The sections that are told through Alexander, the Russian guide, are maddeningly funny. (Although the humor gives way to gravity in latter sections). Alexander, through murderously funny broken English, recounts the story of the search for Augustine, the woman who saved JSF's grandfather from the Nazi's. The humor of the reconstructed language also serves as an ingenious narrative ploy - there's a sweetness and wide-eyed naivete in Alexander's imperfect English when he stumbles upon hidden tales and insights. It allows the readers to discover such moments of divulgence from an oblique and unique angle. This deliberate mashing-up of language keeps the story fresh and alive throughout. The Trachimbrod sections JSF tells are uneven. There are moving sections, and moments that brim with real poetry and philosophical insight. However, the events in the tale are more or less rehashed magic realism, reminiscent of Garcia Marquez, or episodes from Rushdie's earlier works. The ending that deals with Alex's family, with his grandfather and father, is unsatisfactory and contrived. There's an emotional falsity to the tone of the ending as JSF tries in vain to tie everything together and bring us 'the illumination.' It is so trite and manipulative that it makes you wonder if it's the same self-assured writer who gave us the previous two-hundred pages. Despite its apparent flaws, "Everything Is Illuminated" is a [heck] of a book. There's a freshness and boldness in concept and storytelling that has been missing in much of contemporary fiction of late (Franzen included). I will definitely read future writing of JSF as I'm sure his writing will only grow in maturity and eventually keep pace with his passion and courage.
Rating:
Summary: Is Foer the love child of IB Singer and Dave Eggers...
Review: ...with a little Sholom Aleichem on the side? There are two kinds of people who should avoid this book. For the rest, I would definitely recommend it. 1) This is a VERY funny book in some parts (there is a dog named "Sammy Davis Junior Junior" who is the seeing-eye dog for the hero's chauffeaur). It is a moving and sad book in other parts, as the characters revisit Foer's grandfather's village after the Holocaust. The tone changes from chapter to chapter like a roller coaster. If you would be disturbed by a funny chapter following a Holocaust chapter, you should avoid this book. 2) This is a very post-modern, self-referential, aren't-I-clever sort of book. The two main characters, Jonathan (the author) and his translater Alex, send each other the chapters of the book each has written, make comments on the chapters they have been sent, and even make comments on the COMMENTS on the chapters. This is the part that reminded me of Dave Eggers' "Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" but if you don't like that sort of thing, you should avoid this book. Who should actually read this book: Everyone else. It really IS funny where it's funny, and tremendously sad where it's sad. Foer really does have a wonderful imagination and a flair for language. Although I found the navel-gazing comments-on-comments-on-comments a littly annoying, I have to admit that days after finishing it the images are still with me, making me think. So many books are disposable today, so many books leave your brain the minute you set them down, this is not one of them. So I forgive him for being too clever, and suggest that you do too.
Rating:
Summary: Not to be spleening the scribe so
Review: Methinks some reviewers protest too much. This book reaches back to Joyce's Finnegan's Wake, with one foot on Isaac Beshivis Singer (spelling?) and the other on Steve Martin. Yeah, it's a crazy kind of two step. I'm not surprised some reviewers can't figure out where the beat is, but they don't need to fall all over themselves spleening the author. I highly recommend this book to readers with a good ear and open mind.
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