Literary reviews by Tim Love.
Warning: Rather than reviews, these are often notes in preparation for reviews that were never finished, or pleas for help with understanding pieces. See Litref Reviews - a rationale for details.

Wednesday, 9 June 2004

"Everything is Illuminated" by Jonathan Safran Foer (Penguin, 2002)

I liked the book. Do you like

  • "It was rigid to find, and we became lost people many times. This gave Grandfather anger" (p.30).
  • "From space, astronauts can see people making love as a tiny speck of light. Not light, exactly, but a glow that could be mistaken for light - a coital radiance that takes generations to pour like honey through the darkness to the astronaut's eyes...couples trying unsuccessfully to have children who burn their frustrated image on the continent like the bloom a bright light leaves on the eye after you turn away from it." (p.95)

? The first quote is an example of the language used in quite a lot of the book. One gets used to it after a while - the humour of the book doesn't depend on it. The second shows the lyricism that punctuates the piece. Stylistic comparisons with Nabokov are apt.

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