Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer

I briefly visited Saint Augustine in April, and asked my friends to let me borrow their favorite books, with the promise of reading them.The only book I got was this one, loaned from my pal Dawson, who says it's amazing.

Much of the story in this book is told through letters between Jonathan (the american hero) and Alex, who lives in the Ukraine and speaks some english. Alex has a very unique verbiage, choosing English words that relate to what he intends to translate from Ukranian. But the story told is mostly about Jonathan's ancestors and their village (shtetl) of Trochenbrod, which was annihilated in World War 2.

Like most highly-acclaimed literary novels, Foer is very liberal with his syntax. You know what they say about Picasso. He was a master of traditional painting, so when he broke the rules, his art was made better. I don't think that's the case here. Some of this book's "scenes" made no sense.

You might have already guessed it, this book sheds a little extra light on just how bad the holocaust was. I know it was bad, but my understanding is very small. So you might credit much of this story's acclaim to the fact that these kinds of stories need to be told. The world should never forget how bad Nazis really were/are.

But the story isn't all about the holocaust, or else it would be a joyless horror story. Within the tale of Foer's family and shtetl, there are some very romantic romances. Others tales were likely weathered and imbelished the way legends are. And that's okay. I'm not going to forget Trochenbrod.