flounderound's review against another edition
Way too fucking difficult to follow what the fuck.
mamalemma's review against another edition
5.0
This is an incredibly complex book. It is filled with unlabeled dialogue — which makes it hard to follow at times — dense with meaning, and with multiple plots. Not sub-plots, mind you; real, actual multiple plots, all of which serve to illustrate the same issues, frailties, *humanity* — be it an individual, a marriage, a family, a nation, or a people. At its core, I think it asks the question, “are we our own worst enemies?” and I think it answers “yes.” But I also think it tells of redemption.
Truth be told, I’m not fully sure what to think. There’s a ton to sort through, and that makes this a great book for discussion.
Truth be told, I’m not fully sure what to think. There’s a ton to sort through, and that makes this a great book for discussion.
mschlat's review against another edition
4.0
This is a novel of devastation, both on a personal level (a family falls apart) and on a geopolitical level (the first sentence starts "When the destruction of Israel commenced, ..."). It's also a novel about the habit of imagining chaos and disasters in your life and what to do when that habit is challenged, when the very worst occurs and you choose to live past the event. It's not an easy or joyful read, but it is a funny and thoughtful experience.
There's much I love about this book. The first paragraph is one of the best I've read in years, and Foer's prose (especially his lists) evokes a baroque feel that really appeals to me. His depiction of Sam, the thirteen year old boy in the family, is spot on; Foer captures the mixture of defiance, creativity, horniness, and nascent wisdom that I see in some middle schoolers. The geopolitical storyline is highly detailed (just how would the Middle East implode?) and thus appropriately frightening, and I liked the mix of different narrators and storytelling styles.
However, at times I found the storytelling oblique, as if passages were meant to have more significance than what I was picking up. I also didn't like how the novel abandoned its multiple perspectives from the first half to focus almost entirely on the father by the end --- I felt a bit cheated.
It's hard for me to come up with one single takeaway from the novel --- it's a work about what it means to be family and what it means to be Jewish, and I'm neither Jewish nor very family oriented. But I could appreciate the emphasis on process and pain and the choice to see life beyond your own imagined disasters.
There's much I love about this book. The first paragraph is one of the best I've read in years, and Foer's prose (especially his lists) evokes a baroque feel that really appeals to me. His depiction of Sam, the thirteen year old boy in the family, is spot on; Foer captures the mixture of defiance, creativity, horniness, and nascent wisdom that I see in some middle schoolers. The geopolitical storyline is highly detailed (just how would the Middle East implode?) and thus appropriately frightening, and I liked the mix of different narrators and storytelling styles.
However, at times I found the storytelling oblique, as if passages were meant to have more significance than what I was picking up. I also didn't like how the novel abandoned its multiple perspectives from the first half to focus almost entirely on the father by the end --- I felt a bit cheated.
It's hard for me to come up with one single takeaway from the novel --- it's a work about what it means to be family and what it means to be Jewish, and I'm neither Jewish nor very family oriented. But I could appreciate the emphasis on process and pain and the choice to see life beyond your own imagined disasters.
hannahschwarz's review against another edition
5.0
Spoiler
Oh man, I really did not want to give this book five stars because the real-life material it's based on--the author's weird one-sided email affair with Natalie Portman--is so gross and selfish. But the book is incredible. It captures American Judaism--Jews' relationship with the past, present, and future and American Jews' relationship with Israel and Israelis--so well. The dialogue is unrealistic, but it's fine because the lack of realism means that the issue(s) actually undergirding the conversations comes through. The dynamics when all family members are present are insane, neurotic, lacking in respect for physical and personal boundaries, and deeply comforting because they're so familiar.Safran-Foer's tangents about seemingly unrelated incidents, always tied back to a broader point he's trying to make, might be obnoxious (or even come off as pretentious) to some readers, but I appreciated them. Sometimes, oftentimes, it's just easier to explain a thing indirectly--by explaining something else and analogizing--than it is to explain the thing directly. Finally, the ending is perfect.
bookhouseboi's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
"Sometimes feelings are like that - not positive, not negative, just a lot." Somehow, this is both Foer's easiest novel to just pick up and read- as it focuses mostly on an ordinary marriage crisis - and yet it's so much harder to comprehend in its entirety in comparison to "Extremely Loud" or "Everything is Illuminated" (both of which I absolutely adore). And I strongly believe that that's the point of it all. "Here I am" presents a world that requires absolute solutions and a protagonist that cannot answer to these needs. It depicts a search for home, in oneself, in others, in family, in religious and political beliefs, in war, in history, in memory, in media. It is and isn't an alternative history novel about the fate of Israel as much as it is and isn't a novel about Jewishness in a culture that seems to have developed into something that doesn't have a place for religion anymore. It's an intermedial novel, interwoven video games and television scripts support Foer's typical distorted narratives. It's a novel that haunts me since I'd read it the first time at 17 and it's still a mystery to me 6 years and many, many ergodic novels later. Someday it will call out to me again, but I'm not sure if I can respond with "Here I Am".
alexgeorge's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
lorimichelekelley's review against another edition
4.0
Audio version: Books about long-term marriages always get my attention, because I’ve been in one I thought would last forever and am now in one I know will last a lifetime, and I like reading about how others navigate their relationships.
This book has been called pretentious. I disagree. If insight is pretentious, then, okay. And if paradoxes couched in banal observances are pretentious, then okay again. And this narrative is packed with those. They surprised me. They fascinated me. But they never made me think, “oh pretentious!” Instead, they were very down-to-earth, and very relatable - for someone who makes such connections and worries about the same things.
I almost gave up on the book in the beginning because of these very annoying and un-contextualized interjections of what I took to be an angry, misogynistic, lewd voice. That gets explained later, and I’m glad I stuck with it. Julia and Jacob, along with their kids and other relatives are a fun bunch of characters that one can’t help but care about. I’ll be listening to this again in the future.
This book has been called pretentious. I disagree. If insight is pretentious, then, okay. And if paradoxes couched in banal observances are pretentious, then okay again. And this narrative is packed with those. They surprised me. They fascinated me. But they never made me think, “oh pretentious!” Instead, they were very down-to-earth, and very relatable - for someone who makes such connections and worries about the same things.
I almost gave up on the book in the beginning because of these very annoying and un-contextualized interjections of what I took to be an angry, misogynistic, lewd voice. That gets explained later, and I’m glad I stuck with it. Julia and Jacob, along with their kids and other relatives are a fun bunch of characters that one can’t help but care about. I’ll be listening to this again in the future.
akbhatia's review against another edition
dark
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
Such a messy story, it felt very labored. Long walk for a short drink of water.