Everything Really is Illuminated

Hello Blob readers! I am Kait and this is my first post! I feel a little obligated to post about my very favorite book ever: Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything is Illuminated. Usually when I love a book it is from my point of view as a writer, or as a reader, or as a to-be publishing employee. Everything, however, I love from all of these perspectives. But perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself…

Everything is Illuminated begins with Jonathan, a Jewish American, traveling to the Ukraine to locate the woman who saved his grandfather’s life during the Holocaust. He hires Heritage Tours to help him locate the town of Trachimbrod and a woman he knows only as Augustine. Alex becomes his guide and the hilarity begins. Alex speaks English, but speaks as if he skipped basic vocabulary and went straight to the thesaurus. Alex’s “blind” grandfather is Jonathan’s driver, and their seeing-eye dog, Sammy Davis Junior Junior, comes along for the ride. Did I mention Jonathan is terrified of dogs?

"She is deranged, but so so playful." -Alex

The main story is largely very funny, but there are two other timelines. One is the history of Trachimbrod, imagined by Jonathan and bordering on magical realism.  The other is a series of letters from Alex to Jonathan after the main timeline has concluded. It becomes clear through these letters what kind of affect Jonathan had on Alex, who matures gracefully and sometimes too quickly through the main timeline.

"You were perhaps accounting upon a translator with more faculties." -Alex

The chapters that include Jonathan’s imagined history of Trachimbrod sometimes drag on, but these chapters are also the most insightful into many subjects – how our ancestors shaped our lives, different kinds of sadness, love versus the idea of love. When the climax of the book arrives, however, the history of the town is suddenly is not so unlikely or so old. The climax of the book, and the chapters after it, are my favorite, as the three storylines stay separate yet interweave and refer to one another.

Everything is Illuminated is an adventure across the Ukraine, across time, and into the characters involved. On a single page I have laughed out loud, considered a philosophical thought, and wiped away tears. Every character involved in every timeline changes to some degree – even Sammy Davis Junior Junior. It is a book I recommend highly to everyone I speak to about literature.

The trailer for the movie can be found here. Simply listening to the trailer might help get the Ukrainian accent in your mind, but the movie only includes the main timeline. It’s a wonderful movie, but leaves out most of what the book and the author have to offer.

Happy reading and I hope you someday decide to pick up something by Foer. I truly believe he is one of the most talented and intelligent writers of our time.