Everything is Illuminated

What a strange relationship I had with Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything is Illuminated. When I started reading it, I found it incredibly twee and precious. Then, I got sort of into it. But, by the final third of the novel I was so ready to be done with it that I had no patience for the gimmicks and the punctuation and the look-at-me-ness of it all. It's the first book I have actually thrown upon finishing it since the disaster that was The Little Friend.

It's clear why Safran Foer is a bit of a hipster target. I get why Gawker has entries upon entries mocking him (this is not meant as an endorsement of Gawker, but I see how Safran Foer can kind of get under your skin).

There are moments of brilliant writing in the novel. Safran Foer has a way with phrases, but frequently there would be dramatic phrase after pronouncement after statement, which drew away from the power of the book as a whole. I think that all things considered, the thread about Brod was the only subplot that really grabbed me, and once that had run its course, I found myself just begging for it all to be over. Maybe I lack something in my soul that this book is meant to speak to.