Everything is Illuminated

by Jonathan Safran Foer

[thepunktheory]

Full review on my blog!

The special thing about this book is that it tells two stories. We have Jonathan who travels to Ukraine and cruises the countryside in search of his grandfather's past. And then we have the story of Trochenbrod, the Jewish shtetl he is looking for.
For some reason, the book reminded me a lot of Nick Cave's And the Ass saw the Angel. Not because the story is similar, but because both books gave off the same vibe.
To be honest, I am not a big fan of the novel. I found large portions of the book somewhat unsettling and several chapters made me cringe. That's especially true for the story dealing with Trochenbrod which is filled with weird moments of eroticism followed by horror.
The actual story of Jonathan isn't that entertaining and mostly consists of bad jokes making for an even more irritating contrast with the other half of the book.
What annoyed me the most, however, were the parts of the book attributed to Alex, Jonathan's Ukranian guide and, later in the book, friend.
His English is relatively decent, however, he often uses words that don't quite match what he wants to say, although the meaning is somehow related. It's a bit like typing a regular sentence and then using a thesaurus to swap a word that's just not quite on point. I know this was supposed to be funny, but it simply lacked charm and had me rolling my eyes after the second chapter.