Everything is illuminated - Jonathan Safran

BossArky

Just bidding on this on ebay. An american friend reckons it is good. Anyone read it?

rain on

I've found it to be one of those books that opinions are very divided on - I hated it but a friend of mine loved it, it's probably one of her favourite books ever. We did his second novel in our book club and I loved that but other people didn't like it at all. I couldn't put my finger on why I didn't like it exactly.. well i found the Ukrainian guy's idiosyncratic language very irritating, and the other strand of the narrative just bored me. I finished it but it was a struggle. It probably is worth reading though because so many people seem to really like it.

Tree

same here, i adored it and anothe friend of mine couldnt even get half way through.

id reccommend tryin it at least and report yoru findings back1

Dylan_James

I loved the Ukrainian guys correspondence with the author, there is a great quote from a review were it says: "the character learnt english by reading a thesaurus." The other narrative about the village history was straining but worth while in the end. I thought that he was obviously a talented writer so I picked up Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.

I thought that this was much more of an inviting story and the kid came across as one of the most real characters I have ever read. If you were put off by Everything is Illuminated, then check out Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.

On a side note, did anyone see the film of Everything is Illuminated?

doonothing

I loved everything is illuminated, such a refreshing and original book, beautifully written in a great style, especially the strange linguistic style of the ukranian story!

i though extremely loud and incredibly close was pretty standard and went beyond the writer having a distinctive style into the realm of nearly copying himself...

the film of everything is illuminated was pretty bland i thought, and left out one of the most important strands of the storyline!

great book though, well worth checking out..

John

One of the worst books I've ever had the misfortune of reading. Forced humour and forced serious bits, it was a chore to read. The Ukrainian's bad English stopped being funny very quickly and just veered off to the land of cheap shots a la Borat. I did it with a book club, about half of whom are not native speakers of English, and we all agree that the broken English was offensive more than funny (and that it was a pretty terrible book overall). The whole thing just seemed patronising, dull and heavy handed.

"A work of genius. A new kind of novel... After it things will never be the same again. It will blow you away" is how The Times described it and I really want some of what they were smoking when they did that review!