Rating: 
Summary: Self-importance writ large
Review: As the blurbs on his books show, Foer has made a lot of powerful allies in the literary world, but despite his obvious talent, I still find his tone incredibly self-indulgent and arrogant and his ideas rather obvious and clichéd. Alex is not really a character so much as an excuse to mock the Other that the real protagonist, Foer, is forced to encounter. He winds up nothing more than a caricature of Eastern Europeanness while the privileged, educated American retains all the intellectual insight and moral concern that the author purports to stand for. This is supposed to be balanced out by the book's juvenile humor and attempts at irony, but what is illuminated, in the end, is less the author's talent than his sense of self-importance.
Rating: 
Summary: MY FAVORITE BOOK
Review: No other book has ever made me laugh out loud as much as this one did, and no other book has ever made me cry. What's amazing about Everything Is Illuminated is how new it is, and how it bursts at its seams with life, while still maintaining a great humility, and respecting both its subject matter and the reader. To say that the author is some sort of genius or prodigy is beside the point, I think. Rather, he's a human, with a unique talent for expressing his, and our, humanity.
Rating:
Summary: Genius
Review: This writing sparkles unlike anything else out there now. It's absolutely new, full of life, funny, sad, and unafraid. Mr. Foer has demonic talent. Reading this novel felt, to me, like looking at one of Picasso's early paintings. One gets the impression that Mr. Foer will not only be around for a very long time, but will change the way books are written.
Rating:
Summary: illumination delivered
Review: I still have more pages of this book to complete, yet even before finishing I feel absolutely compelled to write. I want to tell people I know and people I do not know that they must read this book.
So often I read fiction where the author's mechanics are all-too-obvious-- unusual verbs plainly intended to propel sentence after sentence, etc-- yet JSF's narrative techniques are rather nothing that can be learned. His imagination is extraordinary, his language so tenderly and confidently rendered that it is nearly impossible to believe this is his novel debut.
This book causes visceral reactions-- I'm a fairly cynical reader, yet I found myself misty-eyed in a coffee shop yesterday and laughing aloud on the subway the day before. I surprised myself, or perhaps more accurately, the damningly young author surprised me. For lack of a less-cliched phrase, JSF gets under your skin. Believe it. If this isn't a stroke of genius, then I have no idea what is.
Rating: 
Summary: Most of it is "Illuminated"
Review: Jonathan Safran Foer takes literary risks and entertaining leaps in his debut novel, "Everything is Illuminated," an amusing chunk of magical realism. It's a tragicomic experience, centering on the devastation of the Holocaust, and a modern-day quest for the past.A young Jewish American man -- same name as the author, Jonathan Safran Foer -- travels to the Ukraine. His reason: to locate Augustine, a woman who apparently saved his grandfather from the Nazis... only he just has a photo to guide him. He's accompanied by an annoying, flatulent dog, and an old man haunted by war memories. He also corresponds with the old man's quirky grandson Alex, and new revelations are made about both young men through their letters. And in the third story-line, we are treated to the history of Trachimbrod, an endearing shtetl full of peculiar people... which was destroyed by the Nazis long ago. "Everything is Illuminated" seems to be primarily about the past and present, and how those two things connect. To twentysomethings now, World War II seems as distant in some ways as the Trojan War, unless brought to life by someone else's words. Foer may not have been there during the Holocaust, but his unique novel will leave you thinking and wondering about the past. It's certainly an unconventional story. Foer has a quirky, offbeat style that gets a little off-kilter. And he bends everything from his narrative to the characters to the English language ("spleening"?). Not to mention reality -- by naming his alter ego Jonathan Safran Foer, he blurs the line between fiction and reality. Is this based on anything real? Does Alex exist? Is there a Trachimbrod? At the end of the day, none of it matters. Even if these things don't actually exist, they certainly do have real counterparts. Foer's book is not quite a work of genius. Sometimes the fragmented, topsy-turvy narrative runs away from him. Not to mention that the in-jokes -- the flatulent dog, the Russo-American dialect -- do not age terribly well. But the humor and magical realism tinges start to fade as the Holocaust looms overhead. While the opening chapters may make you laugh, it becomes far deeper and more intricate later on. "Everything" may not be totally illuminated, but it is a quirky, sometimes saddening book that stumbles and takes a few risks. A flawed but excellent debut.
Rating:
Summary: Entertaining & Enjoyable!
Review: Finally, a young writer with some talent. I had a conversation with a friend over how lousy a lot of these Gen-X or Post-Gen X writers are (ie: Dave Eggers,et al) and we agreed: EVERTHING IS ILLUMINATED is a creative and fun book that takes risks and delivers a solid little narrative. For a younger generation, especially, I would recommend, (but also, for any age group, and for those who love this work), in addition to: MIDDLESEX and LIFE OF PI, please look into: SIMON LAZARUS by M.A. Kirkwood. Now if anything is a fresh and deserving read it is this one. Add it to your Summer reading list.
Rating:
Summary: Everything is Illuminated
Review: This is JSFs first book but after I read (and loved!) it I started seeing his name everywhere in magazines and online. He is a young writer who seems to be bursting onto the scene full force with the creative gusto and wide open sentence strokes that made Dave Eggers' popular. There are points where the writing zips and zings off and leaves me wondering what exactly is happening but that is a small price to pay for the surprising plot twists and manipulation of language which JSF is gleefully twisting into a novel. I enjoy writers who use magic realism, for example Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Zora Neal Hurston, and I liked this book for the same diversion from reality that well, illuminates an issue with new light. Reading this was plain fun, and the important Jewish heritage his character explores will tug at anyone's heart strings, Jewish or not. This is a story of what is lost and found in both our individual families and our universal past and it comes alive through a youthful lens. Keep an eye on this hot young writer, I hear a second novel is in the works and I look forward to it!
Rating:
Summary: One You Should Definitely Read
Review: Foer's "Everything is Illuminated" has three main threads of narrative. Our first narrative comes from a young Ukranian man, Sasha, who is working as an interpreter for a visiting American while his grandfather is working as his driver. The American is Jonathan Safran Foer, a "character" we only see through the eyes of Sasha. Foer's decision to put himself in his own novel as a character at first seemed a bit iffy- I thought it would just end up grating on my nerves or becoming farfetched. Despite my fears, Foer manages to make his own presence in the novel work. His characterization of his fictionalized self is neither too self-deprecating nor too self-centered. Foer has come to Ukraine to find the history of his family and the town they lived in, a town that is mysteriously absent from maps. One of the ballsiest narrative tricks Foer does is to give Sasha a not-too-perfect grasp of the English language. Sasha's imperfect English is a big source of the humor in the novel. His slips are also sometimes the most poignant parts of the story; his grasp for language sometimes mirrors that inward grasping that all the characters are going through as painful memories and truths are being dredged up.
The second thread of narrative is told in a more straightforward prose style. This is the story of Foer's family and their mysterious origins in a Ukraine. It is also the story of a town, a love story, and a story about WWII. I won't go into the details of the plot, to leave you the pleasure of discovering it for yourself. I'll just say that this narrative reminds me of the fairy-tale like stories of Gabriela Garcia Marquez and other dream-fiction writers.
The third, and my personal favorite, thread comes in letters from Sasha to Jonathan. Apparently, as Jonathan is writing the narrative of his family, he is sending each piece of the story to Sasha for review. These sections of the novel are delightful in their acknowledgment of the blurry line between fiction, fact, history, and memory. Sasha's remonstrations of Jonathan's factual errors, and his protestations against certain turns in plot, all point to a questioning of the possibility of capturing truth or history in any concrete way.
One weakness in Foer's novel, in my opinion, was his occasional over-the-top "experimental" prose style. Sometimes it seemed like he ripped technique right out of the pages of e.e. cummings collected works.
Besides some small flaws, Foer's novel is a fantastic achievement for a writer so young. But try it for yourself! Pick up a copy. Another book I need to recommend -- completely unrelated to Foer, but very much on my mind since I purchased a "used" copy off Amazon is "The Losers' Club" by Richard Perez, an exceptional, highly entertaining little novel I can't stop thinking about.
Rating:
Summary: Everything IS illuminated...eventually...
Review: After finally finishing this book, I have to say it is one of the most delightful novels I have ever read. However, I almost never even read it, because it is a little slow going at the beginning. JSF's writing style is certainly unique, but you are really given no warning what to expect when you start reading. He opens with the broken English of Alex, and you almost feel like someone is playing a practical joke on you. And then he plunges right in to the story of 18th century Trachimbrod. It seems completely incongruous, and i think I put off reading any further for maybe a month or so. I am glad I continued.
As I said, Foer's writing style is immensely unique. This is both a blessing and a curse. On one hand, you will be invigorated by reading something so fresh and new. On the other hand, you practically have to teach yourself a new way of reading and thinking to follow the lines of the story. But it all pays off.
What a delightful story of Shtetl life as well as the modern day Ukraine! Having witnessed such things, I have to say some of his parodies are dead on. Absolutely laugh out loud funny. And the fact that he himself is a character in the book gives it a hint of Vonnegut. Definitely a brilliant first outing from an author that we should hope to hear more from.
Foer does a beautiful thing by depicting these Jewish people in a humorous light without being degrading or mocking. He picks up on some really fundamental details, and I think that makes the book so much more enjoyable. If you liked this novel, I also recommend "An Almost Perfect Moment" by Binnie Kirshenbaum. It also has a very unique writing style (a little easier to follow) that makes it so thoroughly engaging, and a wonderful story as well. Both authors should be commended.
Rating: 
Summary: Everything Is Pretentious
Review: What an overrated, pretentious and annoying author. This book started off pretty entertaining, then became unbearable by the time Safran Foer employed his 5,000th literary technique to show off how smart he is. Whoopdeedoo! You're smart! Guess what? Who cares? Well, a lot of people do apparently, but that's only because he wrote about the holocaust. Now, the nerve of this guy, his next book revolves around 9-11. What a revolting way to sell books. And his article in Playboy? The guy wrote an article about blank pieces of paper. He really is atrocious.
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