Everything is Illuminated

Stemming from my love of Eugene Hutz, lead in Gogol Bordello, is a curiosity regarding everything he's produced. It turns out he's in a movie version of Everything is Illuminated, which led me to read it.

It's a good book, but I can't really put a finger on how I feel about it overall. Reviews of it talk about how the author is a new, fresh form of genius on the literary scene and blah blah da da da, but one can never be sure what that actually means. I always feel like being a book critic would be a matter of creating soundbites memorable and catchy enough to go on book covers, which would probably not be too hard.

The protagonist/writer is meant to be an interpretation of the author-Jonathan, with the skeleton of the story being a basic recreation of his own family-learning journey. To me, though, the real main character is Alex, his amateur translator. The novel's setup includes chapters of the main character's book, with some chapters written by Jonathan, some by Alex, and some chapters are composed of letters written to Jonathan from Alex after their adventures.

Chapters written by character-Jonathan don't interest me nearly as much as those written by Alex; they  just seem to go on and on (although in a beautifully-phrased way) about character-Jonathan's ancestors, for whom  I felt little to no affection. The stories include events which should be extremely personal, but the characters within them feel unsympathetic and a wee bit sociopathic at times. Maybe it's on purpose or maybe it's just me, but character-Jonathan's writing just doesn't grab me like the voice the author gave to Alex. 

One of the passages written by Jonathan was really memorable to me, though, and I've re-typed it here:

Brod's life was a slow realization that the world was not for her, and that for whatever reason, she would never be happy and honest at the same time. She felt as if she were brimming, always producing and hoarding more love inside her. But there was no release. Table, ivory elephant charm, rainbow, onion, hairdo, mollusk, Shabbos, violence, cuticle, melodrama, ditch, honey, doily... None of it moved her. She addressed her world honestly, searching for something deserving of the volumes of love she knew she had within her, but to each she would have to say, I don't love you. Bark-brown fence post: I don't love you. Poem too long: I don't love you. Lunch in a bowl:I don't love you. Physics, the idea of you, the laws of you: I don't love you. Nothing felt like anything more than what it actually was. Everything was just a thing, mired completely in its thingness.

I like this description of Brod's mindset, but I was disappointed in the way she can't seem to develop past it before I lose interest in her. (Again, this might be the point but it's not to my taste right now.) It could be that I lacked the inclination to really look into ancestor-based characters. I am quite lazy

But Alex! I love everything about Alex. From his thesaurus marred/enhanced English to his love of his family to his somewhat-altered accounts of their journey, he is easily the most likable character, and certainly more emotionally available. He adds levity to a lot of the book, but when he gets serious it doesn't feel forced to me.
Also, he is Eugene Hutz in the movie. =D

If you read it, tell me what you think.