Jonathan Safran Foer - Everything Is Illuminated: Includes an Exclusive Interview With the Author

Pros: Decent writing.
Cons: Contrived, slick, unfunny and unsatisfying

Everything is Illuminated tries really, really hard to do the "right" (read: marketable) things. It's got an edgy little structure to it that's supposed to keep the reader a little unsettled and therefore interested. Its laudable subject matter ...

Pros: Dazzling invention, a wide range of voices, humor, seriousness, and keen empathy.
Cons: The fine line between ambition and pretention: we won't all agree which side Foer's on.

In some ways, I found Jonathan Safran Foer’s debut novel Everything is Illuminated very easy to read, and I’ll choose excerpts in a way that should let you decide if you agree. It was easy to read because it generally moves fast. It was ...

Pros: Quirky culture clash, folklore and a unique story about the aftermath of the war.
Cons: Sometimes a bit too quirky and a little confusing.

In 1997, author Jonathan Safran Foer decided to go on a trip to Prague to embark on a search for his roots. A badly planned 3-day trip to the Ukraine for clues to his Jewish ancestry eventually turned into the novel Everything is Illuminated ...

Pros: Some funny parts with Alex; grim Nazi horrors
Cons: Boring, repetitious, overly sexual and nonsensical. But mostly boring.

Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer was a very disappointing book. My wife and I had a long drive over a weekend and we looked forward to passing the time on the road with an interesting book. Always looking for something new, she ...

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I'm going to have to grapple with some of the plotting in this book to provide anything near an illuminating review. This means I'm going to have to spill a few of its secrets, for which I apologize. Book reviewing is a tight-rope walk. People expect the ...

Pros: A fantastic play on words, irony, satire, and fantasy
Cons: Sometimes confusing in the beginning

A pleasant play on words and a story line to compliment it. After completing this short novel I had the notion that the writer was a 60 year old Ukranian word smith, to my surprise JSF wrote this masterpiece in college. There is a completely unique balance of reality, fiction, and comedy blended together and JSF's play on words is a satire within itself. I have never seen so many elements of writing correctly blended to form a great story. Though JSF's work is elegant it does have it's downfalls- I believe that placing himself within the book was a little "Spike Lee-ish" and somehow took away from the quality of his work. Sometimes in the story the line between fantasy and reality is blurred too much and can seem at first confusing until you delve into the novel. A solid work that will be on summer reading lists nation-wide in a few years.