book review - Everything is Illuminated - Jonathan Safran Foer

Having done things back to front and read Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close first you come to the debut from Foer with a sense of expectation.

On the one hand you expect to be wowed because this won so many plaudits but on the other you know that you are about to enter a highly stylised approach to telling a story that doesn’t always make reading easy.

Sadly for me there was a feeling far too much of the latter with the story weaving in-between the present and the past as the author tries to locate the physical location of his family’s history. He has a few scraps of information left that can help direct him to a Jewish world lost forever in the Second World War. There are moments when as he discovers that last remaining Jew and some of the experiences his relatives went through when the story has the power to move you.

But unfortunately there are far too many things that are just odd and because they echo throughout the story you either like them or don’t. On top of that there is the device used where the story unfolds through a series of letters from the interpreter used by the author to help in the search.

Some of the textual and typography playing around that is evident in Incredibly Loud is here, but not in the same degree. Where my real problem came was with the jumping around in time. It prevented you from ever really getting a chance to get under the skin of a character. So the reader is left with a significant portion of each characters story to develop in their own minds.

There is a story here and perhaps the pressure was to produce something memorable and different from similar types of tracking down relative accounts. The problem is of course that you can work too hard in making it different.

Everything is Illuminated - post V

Have no fear the ending will not be revealed. What can safely be said is that the last third of the book is much more enjoyable than what precedes it. The reason perhaps is because some of the rambling about myths and legends is cut out and real life, which is compelling enough in time of war kicks in.

As the different strands of the story come together the humour drops off and the harsh consequences of the decisions made in war come back to haunt the leading characters.

This starts feeling very much like a personal quest but by the end it is a story that applies to a generation rather than just the one individual family.

A review will follow soon...

Everything is Illuminated - post IV

As the book settles down and gets past the half way mark you are juggling three time periods. The life of the grandfather who shortly after his marriage was to face the Nazis sweeping through the village. The current day search for the story of his escape and the interaction between the interpeter and the author in letters written at stages commenting on the discoveries made as they search for the truth about the past.

Part of the problem is that before any of the stories really opens up and grabs you the time shifts and you go forwards and backwards. The past does inform the present but it does feel sometimes as if the action has not been given the chance to breathe.

You know that the intertwining of the different periods is going to be key to the book and the structure is as important as any of the main characters but perhaps the reaction to that is the reader's choice. You either love it and view it as being very clever or you see it as perhaps over worked and a structure that breaks the continuity.

More tomorrow...

Everything is Illuminated - post III

The dialogue between the character of the limited interpreter and the author keeps this going because what is happening in the present is much more easily accessible than what went on in the past. The scene where they finally find someone who knows of the old Jewish settlement is moving enough to remind you of the kind of emotional power that Foer unleashes in Extremely Loud…

But I have to confess to continuing to struggle with the flow. As a result it is taking a lot longer than normal to get through a book of 275 pages. Determined to finish because on the way there are going to be some funny, moving and clever passages. Just wish at this stage the gaps in between them wasn’t so difficult.
More soon…

Everything is Illuminated - post II

Having started this book I am determined to finish it even if for some reason it doesn’t grab me. On the face of it the story sounds reasonably compelling with the author travelling to the Ukraine to uncover the story of how his family escaped the holocaust.

But the movement back and forth in time is made slightly more difficult by the fact it all feels slightly too over developed. So for instance there are some passages that make you laugh and their humour. Other parts are very well crafted but for some reason it doesn’t flow.

Possibly as the author gets deeper into his mission to uncover the truth and the parallel story of his great-great-great grandmother evolves it will take off a bit more but not yet…

Everything is Illuminated - post II

One of the challenges as a reader is not just to get with the rewinding of time but also to try and work out the narrative voice. It seems to be coming from the translator Alex who is charged with taking Foer to trace his family story.

But in between there are parts of the historical family tree story that are clearly being told by Foer. This divided voice creates the chance for humour and for the author to have a pop at himself ands some of the Jewish stereotypes.

But this is not just about providing different views of the story but also because Foer is playing with language and drawing out the prospect and possibilities of some deliberate misunderstanding.

More soon...

Everything is Illuminated - post I

If there is one thing that immediately strikes you about the writing of Jonathan Safran Foer it is the language.

He is challenging the reader from the first sentence with sentences that are constructed in a way that not only imparts a foreign origin but also some wicked humour. That is at work here as an introduction is voiced by A Ukrainian student who was tasked with helping Foer track down the story of his family’s past.

It is all a fiction of course but it is done well enough to allow you to suspend your judgment and willingly get sucked into the story. That story goes straight from that introduction into the distant past with a Jewish settlement in Poland and tales of dead tradesmen and adopted children. Clearly the mysteries that the modern day American is coming to solve have deep roots…

book review - Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close - Jonathan Safran Foer

This book was recommended as a companion piece to Don De Lillo's Falling Man but it came with a warning that it was very stylised. That determination to deliver a book that is different from the rest is clearly something Jonathan Safran Foer wants to hit you with from the off with the use of photography and pages of clever typography.

The result is that for a while you struggle to get a handle on quite where this story is going. The main character of Oskar the little boy at first is difficult to empathise with. He is grieving the loss of his father but he seems to be an amalgamation of Gunter Grass's Tin Drum lead, reminded me of A Curious Incident... with his touches of odd behavior. In addition to him the character of the dumb grandfather who talks with words on his hands and in notebooks makes it quite difficult to relate to.

The grandparents are there to hold up the parallel of the terrors of war and the Dresden bombing and firestorm reminding you, if you needed it, that terrible things have happened before and sadly will happen again.

But as the story unfolds you starts to understand that although stylised sometimes too much there is a clever story here of one boy searching for a way to come to terms with his grief and sense of loss. As he traverses New York trying to work out the last mystery his puzzle loving father left for him a host of damaged people are introduced and although Oskar can rarely 'heal' them he does seem to start to learn that many people are suffering and the secrets he keeps are perhaps no worse than some of the others eating away at people.

The moment when he finally decides to tell the stranger who can solve the puzzle of the key he has been trying to search for since the start of the story the contents of his father's last message is very powerful.

If the Falling Man expressed the confusion and anger left by the attacks on the twin towers then Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close leaves you with a sense of the struggle that many relatives had as a life far from finished was snuffed out without explanation or a chance to say good bye.

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close - post IV

The conclusion of the book is very moving and in a way having penned this the author should have stepped back and realised that real emotions don’t need to be adorned by lots of clever literary devices.

In many respects this reminds you of Gunter Grass and Georges Perec as the child walks through the city and the odd quest for the lock for the key continues.

When it ends it does so in a way that is straight. The oddness is stripped back and the grandparents, which remain strange until the end, fade out of the picture.

If there is one thing that you take away from this very strongly it is the sense that death and grief are illogical and unfair. That the sense of loss from something as horrific as the Two Towers can never be forgotten. But also the need for communication and the letters and words that the dead leave behind for the living are vital for those seeking comfort.

A review will follow soonish…

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close - post III

As the dual stories of the disaster in New York with the twin towers and the bombing of Dresden in the Second World War open up there is a clever overlap of the story lines between generations.

The link is the grandmother but as the grandfather comes back on the scene she is often communicating with him when Oskar believes she is talking to him. You only start to get the sense of overlapping and clever interweaving as the story unfolds.

It bugs slightly that the grandfather is unable to talk and writes everything down. Okay it is a response to grief but it makes an already heavily stylised book kilter too much in the direction of being too clever for its own good.

What keeps you going is not just the interest in finding out how Oskar’s search for the owner of the key ends but also how the child comes to terms with the loss of his father. Put his weirdness, again overdone, to one side and there is someone in a great deal of pain here.

Last chunk tomorrow…

Extremely Loud & Incredible Close - post II

With echoes of the sort of literary devices used by the likes of Georges Perec to help shape the story the main character Oskar decides to track down every Black in New York. Armed with his key he needs to find the lock for and his own confidence he manages to encounter various people all sharing the surname Black.

What makes the story engaging is not just the question of what he will discover but the weaving in of the back story of his grandparents and the illustration through the meetings with various people what family and memories are all about.

With the gaping hole left where his father used to be Oskar struggles to fill it, along with the thousands of others in a similar situation, but you sense that as he comes across other stories and other causes of regret and sadness he might at least be able to put his own loss into some sort of greater perspective.

More tomorrow…

Extremely Loud & Incredible Close - post I

before anyone starts thinking that I am on some sort of themed reading exercise at the moment with Falling man and now this please let me explain this came highly recommended and for once it was in stock in the local bookstore so that's how things happened.

Along with the recommendations came the comment that this is highly stylized. It doesn't take long to realise that the comment was made in regards to the production of the text as well as the narrative structure. The insertion of colour, photographs and pages with just single words is different.

There are moments you think of Tin Drum by Gunter Grass because of the name Oskar and the tambourine he plays and his oddities. Then of course there are other occasions you think of Falling Man, particularly those passages about grief and the feeling of alienation.

One thing that emerges as way of hooking you in is the idea of the mystery left by the father for the son. The back story explains they both liked to play games and set each other mysteries and perhaps in death Oskar's father has set his son the hardest one yet.

More Monday...