Friday, July 24, 2009

Everything is Illuminated - Jonathan Safran Foer

Amazingly enough, I'd never read or heard of Jonathan Safran Foer before late last year, when my friend (who almost exclusively reads chick lit) gave me Extremely Loud, Incredibly Close to read after someone from work had lent it to her. I will always be grateful that she did - I love that book. It's so funny and so sad.

Everything is Illuminated took me so long to read, and I'm still not sure what the reason for that is. I wonder if I would have enjoyed it more if I had read it first, before ELIC - I really enjoyed it, but certainly not as much. That said, I loved the relationship between Sasha, his grandfather, Jonathan and Sammy Davis Jr Jr, and the whole idea that if a writer can give their characters a happy ever after, why would they choose not to? (I watched The Orphanage last night, and I can see both sides on this point).

I am curious to see the film adaptation of this thought - has anyone seen it?
Posted by Briony at 10:31 PM
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2 comments:

moonrat said...

i haven't read EXTREMELY LOUD, as a caveat--

i read EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED when it first came out, and essentially in one two-day sitting. i LOVED it. i thought it was very original and endlessly creative with language. (that was long, long ago, and i was very young, but i'm not sure anything would change if i re-read.)

i saw the movie when it came out, too. and i liked it--although only when i'd convinced myself it was a different story from the book entirely. if you're a purist, don't make yourself angry by watching it.

July 25, 2009 at 10:18 AM
Megan said...

Everything is Illuminated is one of my favorite books. Just love it. But I agree that the movie felt very different. It's a hard book to put on screen, I think. Not that it was terrible. Just don't expect a perfect translation.

August 6, 2009 at 7:15 AM

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