Book Review: Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer

Everything is Illuminated is Jonathan Safran Foer’s first novel. I cannot call it anything but masterful. It follows the journey of the main character, Jonathan, as he travels to the Ukraine in search of Trachimbrod, the town his grandfather lived in, and the woman who saved his grandfather from Nazis during German occupation. The novel is structured as correspondence between Jonathan and his Ukrainian guide, Alex, as they jointly pen a novel about their experience searching for Jonathan’s history. The novel alternates between Alex’s descriptions of the search and Jonathan’s fictitious history of Trachimbrod. Also, letters from Alex to Jonathan about what they have written are interspersed throughout.

The novel begins with Alex’s first chapter. He writes in charmingly mangled English. The humorous misuse of language is an immediate draw and manages to be clumsy and eloquent at the same time. The shift in voice between chapters is a little unwieldy at first but becomes very natural very quickly. The language throughout the novel is alarmingly beautiful and heavy without being saccharine or melodramatic.

On the surface, Everything is Illuminated is about Jewish history and the horrors of the Holocaust, but really, it is about much more than that. It is about memory, history, family and the nature of love. It is impeccably structured and beautifully written. In the end, it truly is illuminating.

© 2008 Natalie Manke

Feedback: