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Adina (way behind)'s Reviews > Everything is Illuminated
Everything is Illuminated
by
by
Read 2015. Minor edits 2022. I was quite blunt back then :))
This book seems like it was written by someone on drugs. It screams - I am such a special and interesting book. It was indeed special but not always in a good way.
I have such mixed feelings about this novel. There were some parts that I liked and others in which I wanted to close the book and delete it from my Kindle. I wanted to stop so many times but somehow I kept going and then I found some passages that made me want to hang on in there.The last 20% of the book was torture.
So, as a short summary. A Jew American goes to Ukraine to find the woman that helped his grandparents escape from the Nazis. He travels together with an interpreter (Alex, the only character I connected with), his grandfather and a crazy dog. They do not find the woman but of course it does not matter because the plot is just a pretext to launch in a series of side stories and philosophy. The book is fragmented, he employs a lot of (too many) literary gimmicks to tell the story : letters, different POV, excerpts from books, three pages of dots etc. I enjoyed the letters sent by Alex to the "hero". Those really tried to convey a meaning to the whole story and made me care for the character. However, most of the other gimmicks were distracting and unnecessary. Pages and pages of dull nonsense which only succeeded to irritate me.
The author is trying to be deep and make us feel the horrors of the Holocaust. He succeeded nicely through the confession of Alex's grandfather and through Alex's story. What I did not like about this book, is the invented history of the "hero"'s ancestors. Pretentious hyper realism of sorts. I just disliked most of it.
This book seems like it was written by someone on drugs. It screams - I am such a special and interesting book. It was indeed special but not always in a good way.
I have such mixed feelings about this novel. There were some parts that I liked and others in which I wanted to close the book and delete it from my Kindle. I wanted to stop so many times but somehow I kept going and then I found some passages that made me want to hang on in there.The last 20% of the book was torture.
So, as a short summary. A Jew American goes to Ukraine to find the woman that helped his grandparents escape from the Nazis. He travels together with an interpreter (Alex, the only character I connected with), his grandfather and a crazy dog. They do not find the woman but of course it does not matter because the plot is just a pretext to launch in a series of side stories and philosophy. The book is fragmented, he employs a lot of (too many) literary gimmicks to tell the story : letters, different POV, excerpts from books, three pages of dots etc. I enjoyed the letters sent by Alex to the "hero". Those really tried to convey a meaning to the whole story and made me care for the character. However, most of the other gimmicks were distracting and unnecessary. Pages and pages of dull nonsense which only succeeded to irritate me.
The author is trying to be deep and make us feel the horrors of the Holocaust. He succeeded nicely through the confession of Alex's grandfather and through Alex's story. What I did not like about this book, is the invented history of the "hero"'s ancestors. Pretentious hyper realism of sorts. I just disliked most of it.
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Reading Progress
January 6, 2014
– Shelved as:
to-read
January 6, 2014
– Shelved
September 9, 2014
– Shelved as:
short
April 14, 2015
–
Started Reading
April 14, 2015
– Shelved as:
historical-fiction
April 14, 2015
–
20.0%
May 18, 2015
–
40.0%
"I am struggling with this book. I do not like it much but I seem to keep coming back to it."
May 20, 2015
–
64.0%
"I find it quite skillful the different references to the title that I found in the book (e.g. "all will be illuminated")."
May 21, 2015
–
80.0%
"After a very good writing for a while it turned back to bulls**t. This book will be very hard to rate."
May 25, 2015
–
Finished Reading
January 30, 2018
– Shelved as:
1001
October 10, 2018
– Shelved as:
us
Comments Showing 1-4 of 4 (4 new)
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message 1:
by
Joe
(new)
May 09, 2022 10:09AM
You are entitled to your review, especially if you paid for it.
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I had the same feeling - the letters from Alex to Jonathan were also the best part for me and I did not appreciate the narrative about the hero's ancestors. Another thing that bothered me not because of its content per se but because it felt out of place was how lots of it was sexualized.
Maria Amanda wrote: "I had the same feeling - the letters from Alex to Jonathan were also the best part for me and I did not appreciate the narrative about the hero's ancestors. Another thing that bothered me not becau..." sorry, I only saw your comment now. Alex was the best character. I also recently read a book where the sexualised content came out of nowhere. I do not remember it here.
Someone from Ukraine helped somebody to escape from Nazis? It must be drugs
