Lovely Little Shelf

The Book: Everything is Illuminated, by Jonathan Safran Foer

The Story: This is a story about a 20-something Jewish-American author, who just so happens to share a name with the author.  He heads over to the Ukraine and is on a hunt for a small village that is no longer on the map.  This is where his grandfather grew up and he wants to meet the woman who saved his grandfather from the Nazis during WWII.

This half of the story is written by the author’s “tour guide” through the Ukraine, a young kid named Alex who speaks broken English and does everything he can to help Jonathan on his quest.  They are driven around by Alex’s admittedly crazy grandfather and their dog, who has a certain “affection” for Jonathan.

Between each chapter about the current hunt for Jonathan’s grandfather is a chapter about the history of the town they are searching for and its inhabitants.  In these sections there are stories within stories within stories.  We learn the myths that this town believes and why.  We learn about the books they read, the stories they write, the dreams they have.

The history and the “current” piece loop and curl until they end up right beside each other and end in a more-than-surprising way.

What I Thought: Well. I have to preface this by saying that this was my first encounter with Jonathan Safran Foer.  I had, however, read his wife, Nicole Krauss’s book The History of Love more than once.  I was just blown away by how unique it was and her writing style and word choice and so on.  My first impression of this book was that these two must REALLY help each other out with their writing. They are indistinguishable.  Even the storyline is fairly similar.  After I finished Everything is Illuminated, I did a little bit of Googling and found out that people actually think that his other novel (Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close) is even more similar to The History of Love than this one.  I seriously cannot imagine.  That is one of the first things that I noticed about this book and the impression stuck with me throughout the whole book.

That said, I loved this.  I loved the present and past stories, although it took me a few chapters to be able to read Alex’s chapters with any kind of flow.  I thought that Alex’s humor was spot on and I found myself cracking up at times.

I think what really got me here was just the beauty that the author brought out using just standard, easy to understand word choice. There was nothing pretentious or over-the-top, but a real poetry came out here, and I just ate it up.  This ability to play with words is what took this book from being just ok to being something pretty exceptional.

I loved how the parts about the history of the village was written.  The book full of dreams seriously hypnotized me and I read these sections more than once. So, so good. I don’t want to give anything away, but eventually they meet a woman who has all these boxes in her house where she stores mementos and memories. They are labeled things like, “Watches/Winter,” “The Death of a Firstborn,” “Darkness,” “Poetry/Nails/Pieces.”

There is also a character who is obsessed with the idea of love and she keeps a list of all the sadness that she encounters. “Sadness of knowing your body is normal,” “What if? sadness,” “Sadness of feeling the need to create beautiful things,” “Beauty sadness,” “Sadness of hands.”  It is seriously beautiful.

All of this could have been done badly. It could have been over-wrote, or end up just sounding silly.  None of that happened here.  I’d say that it is perfectly executed.  I came away feeling very happy and very sad.  It was delicious and I could read it (and probably will read it) again and again.  Good, good stuff.

Conclusion: Read this, but don’t read it back-to-back with The History of Love, because I’m pretty sure that’d ruin the feel.  This is beautiful and deserves your time.