Eating Disorders: Everything Is Illuminated Book

Saturday 10 November 2012

Everything Is Illuminated Book

Everything Is Illuminated proposes the possibility of a "did and didn't" duality, of things being one way and also the opposite way. Rather than aligning itself with either "how things were" or "how things could have been", the novel measures the difference between the two, and by so doing attempts to reflect a kind of experiential (rather than historical or journalistic) truth. Novels don't strive to get to the bottom of things, but to express what it's like never to be able to. The climax of the book, for me, is not when the Nazis raid the shtetl but when the two braids of the novel – Jonathan's fantastical history, and Alex's more realistic travelogue — are forced to confront one another. The writing and structure received critical acclaim for the manner in which it switches between two story arcs: (1) fragments of Foer-the-character's novel-in-progress, where he tells in highly literary English a quasi-magical story about the citizens of Trachimbrod; and (2) a straightforward narrative of searching for Trachimbrod (an invented name for the real village Trochenbrod), as told by Alex in broken English.