Rating: 
Summary: Half entertaining, half too clever and tedious
Review: I listend to this BOT. I laughed out loud during the opening sequence. Alex's "interpretation" of his American friend's story was fun to listen to. Then, the book switched to the 1700s, the story of the American's ancestors, and it was so relentlessly boring, repetetive, filled with minutia (lists, sorrows, etc) that at times I think I may have dozed off while walking. As Alex's grandfather's story is revealed by the woman they so much want to be the woman in the picture (who was a marvelous cahracter)the story reaches its emotional zenith. In retrospect, I wish it would have been easier to read rather than listen to this novel. Then I could have skimmed the historical sections, saved much time and not missed anything. But, in reading, I would have missed the mangled translations that made the novel worthwhile. 4 for Alex. 0 for everything else. Average=2.
Rating: 
Summary: Incredible
Review: One of the best novels I have read in quite a while, "Everything is Illuminated" places humor and poingant histories within such close proximity that I was immediately blown away. While the journey to find the woman who saved Foer's grandfather is the initial plot behind the novel, the story rapidly switches between Alex, the slightly inept translator, and Foer's family history long before even the grandfather existed. In the end, the novel offers touching insight into what family is, and, unfortunately, the harsh realities that can bring them down. Comparisons to "A Clockwork Orange" are correct only in the mis-use (or re-invented use) of the English language, but exist strongly in the incredible prose that the author manages to create. I would, and have, recommended this book to everyone that I know....
Rating: 
Summary: Dull, stupid and completely made up
Review: Besides the fact that the book is dull, stupid, thin on plot and fizzles out pretty fast, it is also not true. The Russian broken English is completely made up. No Russian ever spoke English this way. It's a fake. And since the main point of interest is authentic portrayal of a Russian guy in his native environment -- the book cancels itself. It's nothing based on nothing. I am sorry that millions of Americans will read this and think this is how Russians speak and behave.
Rating:
Summary: Where's the beef?
Review: Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated (Dutton, 2002)My, what a clever novel! In any case, that, I imagine, is what Jonathan Safran Foer kept saying as he was writing this. And really, much about it is clever. The comparisons to A Clockwork Orange are completely unwarranted, as Alex, Foer's Ukrainian hero, destroys the English language in a quite different way than does Burgess' Alex. (A less politically correct but more conceptually accurate comparison would be Charlie Chan, as written by Earl Derr Biggers.) Foer's intertwining of stories is also quite clever, and his use of the two narrators to tell the main storylines. However, with all the cleverness going on, Foer seems to have forgotten in many places to actually insert a novel. Threads pick up in odd places and then die with no fanfare, never to be resurrected again; the story has holes without being told an enough of an impressionist way to allow the reader to fill in enough blanks; the characters are obviously there as vehicles to carry off the cleverness, instead of being fully-realized human beings. In other words, this is a linguistic roller coaster, not a novel. Not to say Foer doesn't write well when he forgets about the tricks and applies himself. Especially in the novel's last eighty pages, there are scenes of great beauty and tragedy that are conveyed in powerful manner that make the reader sit up and take notice. (The emotionl impact of every last one of them is dramatically undercut by Foer's following each with a needlessly scatological and/or pornographic piece of attempted humor, each of which fails because of its positioning, but the tragic pieces themselves are extremely well-written.) Unfortunately, these scenes are all too few. One of them is going along swimmingly until he decides to interject a Rick Moody-esque three-page unpunctuated sentence. Horrid. (And a trick he repeats a couple of times afterwards, also throwing in run-on words. Even more horrid.) The book is billed as a comedy, and Foer tries to carry it off as such, but when the finest-written scenes are those of tragedy, it's hard to call it a success as attempted. Foer has the makings of a fine dramatic writer, once he gets away from being so consciously clever. **
Rating:
Summary: Heartwarming and humorous
Review: My criteria for a really good book is if it makes you laugh out loud and moves you to tears - and this does both. The letters to Jonathan from Alex and their adventures in trying to locate the woman who saved Jonathan's grandfather from the Germans in WWII are hysterical at times, and they develop a bond that carries on even after the search is over. I hated to see the tale end.
Rating:
Summary: Nothing is Illuminated
Review: I read this book as part of a summer book group. I'm not exagerating when I say that everyone in the group resented the time we spent trying to understand this novel. One member of our group even read it for another book group and their entire group was equally perplexed. None of us could understand why this novel was so well reviewd. Good luck to all who attempt to understand and learn from this mess!
Rating: 
Summary: doesn't fulfill the publisher's hype...but still intriguing
Review: My hypothesis is that if Jonathan Safran Foer hadn't been Joyce Carol Oates' student at Princeton, this novel would have slipped neatly onto its publisher's midlist like so many others. I'm not quite sure why this book got the hype it got: a front-page review in the NY Times Book Review, for starters. I don't think that's altogether deserved. There are some wonderful aspects of this novel -- and I'd recommend reading it to experience them for yourself -- but brilliant? The author's short fiction, published in the _New Yorker_, merits that adjective, but not this novel. Rather, I'd call it frustrating. There are many moments of glimmering promise, but there's a lot of irritatingly writerly stuff as well, and in the end, it's less than the sum of its parts. Other reviews have summarized the plot, so I'll limit myself to critique. Most importantly, there are too many moments in the book that strike me as a 21-year-old thinking, the other people in my creative writing class are going to think this is hysterical. Safran Foer will be drawing out a character's inner life, taking the reader breathlessly along, when suddenly he abandons the story, figuratively smacks the reader on the shoulder, and cracks a poop joke. It happens repeatedly, and since so much of the book is ethereal and melancholy, the looping from the heavens to the outhouse becomes very frustrating. It didn't work for me. Other commentators have noted the weakness of some of the shtetl sections, and I don't entirely agree. I found his Jewish Pale magical realism to be very beautiful, delicate, original, thoughtful. But then, as before, Safran Foer comes in and messes it up. For example, Alex, in his letters, will frequently describe the preceding shtetl scenes as beautiful or insightful or melancholy -- is this to make sure the reader's paying attention and has adequately appreciated the preceding passages? to demonstrate the constructed nature of all narratives? if it's the first, it's irritating. If it's the second, Safran Foer doesn't do enough with this point to realize it fully as a theme of the novel. It winds up being irksome, unfortunately. What does work, and works pretty consistently from the outset, is the voice and character of Alex Perchov. He's terrific, and his encounters with "the hero," and his own family's past seem truly real. Alex will stay with you long after the novel ends, and the letters from Alex to the young American author are more than enough reason to buy and read this book. The ending has the usual Holocaust inevitability, yet Safran Foer manages to communicate the immediacy of those awful moments so many Europeans faced, and he does so with less artifice than the rest of the book led me to expect. I'm currently reading this for the second time, because I read it once and couldn't make my mind up about it. It warrants a second read, definitely -- but it's not the kind of book one *must* pick up and reread immediately upon finishing it. (There are some books I can't bear to put down, because I'm just not ready to leave the mental world of the novel, or because so many fascinating trails have been laid that I didn't quite have time to follow the first time around that I *need* to go back.) _Everything Is Illuminated_ didn't qualify for that exalted company, but it's obviously thought-provoking enough to keep me wrestling with it, which I guess says something, doesn't it?
Rating:
Summary: response to reader from Rohnert Park, CA
Review: Your first paragraph says it all, and I agree wholeheartedly. But why all the concern over whether the characters or situations are realistic? With regared to Alex, the sometimes narrator, you make the astute insight that he "can at one time hold such an incredible English vocabulary and yet have no knowledge whatsoever of how English is actually spoken." But that's the point. And... it's really funny. You sound so square! I guess you were expecting a "transcendental, life-affirming, mind-blowing experience" though, huh? Funny.
Rating:
Summary: Strikingly Original and Captivating
Review: Jonathan Foer has created in his debut novel, one of the most creative works in many years. His use of English and ability to take it to it's boundaries is a true testament to this newcomers uncanny understanding of the language. The novel is divided into three distinct parts. The first is the fictional history of the town of Trachimbrod, the origin of the protaganist's (also named Jonather Foer) heritage. Second is the story of a Foer's search for the woman who saved his Grandfather from the Nazi's, told from the perspective of his Ukranian translator who is unintentionally hilarious. And the glue between the two peices is the written correspondences of the translator and Foer. There is so much to be impressed and excited about in this book. It is touching, hilarious and insightful. Even with such a complex structure, and an overwhelming amount of humor, Foer has created a work that speaks deeply of love, friendship, loss, and our searches for ourselves. A truly impressive debut that needs to be picked up, whether or not you typically buy into the hype. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: an illuminated experience
Review: It is not an exceptionally entertaining book; it will hurt your heart and leave you sad; it will make you think, and move you. Everything is Illuminated is a fantastic book, and a rewarding journey awaits in its pages. But be careful. If you are looking for a fun, exciting read, this is not the right book to read. Parts of it are funny, but not enough of it to classify it as a fun book. The reward to this book is the way it able to make you think, consider life, and wonder about youself and the those you love. Additionally, Safran Foer's creativity and ability to manipulate the English language left me wondering how Alex, the made-up (?) Ukranian co-author of sections of the book, could be anything except real. This experience alone makes the book worth looking at.
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