976. Everything is Illuminated

Everything is Illuminated
Jonathan Safran Foer
2002

Around 280 pages

With that title, you expect the reading experience to be life changing or at least contain Milan Kundera-style philosophical truths. Instead, we got something that hinted at greatness but didn't quite get there.

This is a sort of quixotic journey starring Jonathan Safran Foer himself, as he tries to track down a woman that may have saved his grandfather from the Nazis. The main thread contains Foer's journey and the second thread is a fictionalized history of the eradicated Jewish shtetl in Poland.

So this is a fragmented novel that goes off on many tangents and seems more interested in asking the Big questions than telling a cohesive story. I personally didn't connect with any of the kooky characters and the humor didn't really land for me, but I did enjoy the exploration of the process of writing and how it relates to preserving history.

Worth reading, but I was a little disappointed overall.

RATING: ***--

Interesting Facts:

Adapted to film in 2005.

UP NEXT: The Double by Jose Saramago