I just finished reading the most amazing book by Jonathan Safran Foer called Everything Is Illuminated. After reading the final few pages on Wednesday I was in shock. This book is a mess, like life, but a gorgeous, enlightening, symphony of a mess. It's like an enormous puzzle, thousands of pieces, with the directions written in Ukrainian.
Question: Why isn't this book required reading?
Answer: It's too human, too real. The characters are too flawed. The story is pain coupled with humor, which is really the only way to deal with pain, by laughing through it, at it, and all around it. It is too grey in a world people want you to believe is black and white. The characters have done both good and bad things in their lives, and continue to make these mistakes. It is revealed that what makes you a good person is not always doing good, but understanding the evil that you do as well as the good. In the end, the connection between the characters, between the human race, is the pain, guilt, love, and humor that we share, our humanity, which is both tears and laughter.
Everything is Illuminated
No comments:
Post a Comment