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Everything is Illuminated
Jonathan Safran Foer. Houghton Mifflin: 2002 (hardcover). ISBN: 0618173870. 276 pages.
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Everything is zany; everything is irreverent; everything is wonderful about this spankin' new novel from a disgustingly talented new writer-only twenty-five years old! What are they putting in the water back East? At any rate, Safran Foer is the fortunate creator of two great new heroes for our time. The first, also named Jonathan Safran Foer, or alternately, "the hero," is a young American Jew (born, coincidentally, the same year as the non-fictional Safran Foer, 1977) who has traveled to the Ukraine to trace his family roots. The second, Alexander Perchov, also known as "Alexi-stop-spleening-me!" is a plucky young stud from Odessa who enjoys, according to his own account, much success with the ladies in many famous and premium nightclubs. It is Alexi's job to escort the fictional Jonathan to the remote village of his ancestors, in aid of research that Jonathan needs to complete the novel that he is working on. It all adds up to a story within a story within a story, but despite this postmodern trickiness, the novel is a joy and a delight to read, truly capable of reducing the reader to both helpless laughter and uneasy tears.
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