Everything is Illuminated

Locations
Call Number: Adult Book / Fiction / General / Foer, Jonathan Safran
On Shelf At: Pittsfield Branch

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Pittsfield Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / General / Foer, Jonathan Safran	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Malletts Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / General / Foer, Jonathan Safran	4-week checkout	Due 05-10-2024

REVIEWS & SUMMARIES

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COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Magical, sad, funny, etc submitted by Jessamynrm on July 9, 2014, 6:09am This book is many things at once--but most of all a fascinating read into what it means to be searching, loving, longing, sure of yourself and confused all at once. The plot centers on a young American man set off to find his roots in Eastern Europe two generations after World War II, but the real story for me was the narrator (the tour guide of the American) and his hilarious and poignant storytelling about his life and history and why they have meaning.

A Struggle submitted by jfogart on June 16, 2015, 1:19pm I loved the movie, but the book was a complete let down. Incredibly difficult to follow or get into due to the writing style used by the author.

Incredible submitted by akhalvey on June 15, 2018, 12:48pm This book isn't written in a traditional style, but the result is spellbinding. It's equal part uplifting and heartbreaking, with humor sprinkled in. The unique characters are so real and alive that your heart soars and aches along with the turns in their stories. Read this book if you want to really feel something about what it means to be human, and the struggle of sorting through the tangled web of the past.

One of the best books I've read submitted by Helengio on June 23, 2023, 11:08pm I couldn't put it down. Though it was at times quite tragic, it was also beautiful, uplifting, and quite funny.

Riveting book with a focus on life submitted by tcramer318 on July 10, 2023, 9:20am Masterful work. I read this about a year after I read his mother's memoir "I Want You To Know We're Still Here", and I think that really helped to contextualize some of the actions that the fictional Jonathan Safran Foer's young father gets up to. What I like most about this book is that it's very clearly a book about the Holocaust, but the emphases in the text is on a thriving Jewish community and all of their quirks as living, flawed people, and on the Ukrainians who are living with sort of the outcome of the last fifty years. The book doesn't get into the nitty gritty of what happens when the Nazis arrive to town, and as someone who reads a lot of literature from this era I can respect this choice. I would recommend this book for anyone who wants to read Holocaust literature that isn't simply a series of one-dimensional tragedies, anyone who's read I Want You to Know We're Still Here, or anyone who's really into magical realism.