Everything is Illuminated

A young man arrives in the Ukraine, clutching in his hand a tattered photograph. He is searching for the woman who fifty years ago saved his grandfather from the Nazis. Unfortunately, however, he is aided in his quest by Alex, a translator with an uncanny ability to mangle English into bizarre new forms; a 'blind' old man haunted by memories of the war; and an undersexed guide dog named Sammy Davis Jr, Jr. What they are looking for seems elusive, a truth hidden behind the veils of time, language and the horrors of war. What they find out turns all their worlds upside down.

I pretty much adored Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, and really wanted another Safran Foer fix. Everything is Illuminated was his debut novel, published in 2002, and is certainly different from his latter work; but almost as good.

It is told in three different voices. The first is that of Alex, telling the story of The Hero (also named Jonathan Safron Foer)'s visit to the Ukraine in order to try and find a woman named Augustine, who saved his grandfather from the Nazis and in turn discover more about where his family came from. The second voice is also that of Alex, but this time in letters written to Jonathan some time after the events told in his narrative take place; therefore we know from the first letter that Augustine is not found. The thing that makes Alex's narrative stand out the most is his rather unique command of the English language. He frequently uses incorrect words in his second language English; such as 'rigid' instead of 'hard' (as in this will be difficult). Alex is also slightly unreliable; you discover in his letters that things he presented about himself in his narrative are not true and thus messes with the reader's opinion of him. Although his tale becomes slightly more touching and sad as the novel progresses, there were times when it seemed that Foer was straying into Shteyngart territory which caused me to panic a little bit, although fortunately Foer manages to rein in the crude humour.

The final voice is that of the tale of Trachimbrod, and in turn 'Jonathan Safran Foer's' family. It begins in around the 1700s and goes right up to the shetel's destruction during the Second World War. This is a fascinating community history with some very interesting characters popping up throughout it; although it is difficult to fully understand what is fact and what is fiction.

Part of what I really liked about Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close was Foer's depictions of people suffering with loss, and this is also a huge part of this novel. From the baker who takes in Brod, an apparent relation of The Hero who is the sole survivor of a cart crashing into the river, Brod's own experiences and then the grief that eats up Alex's grandfather as he begins to reflect on his own part in the war. Foer's prose is beautiful and sensitive as it deals with these issues, and the tales of the Nazi massacres of the Jewish in Eastern Europe were horrible, and heartbreaking.

Whilst I didn't love it as much as his later novel; there were a few ideas that were introduced that weren't really developed, Foer's writing is still stunning and he manages to weave a fascinating if tragic story.