Finished reading "Here I am" by Jonathan Safran Foer I…
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Finished reading "Here I am" by Jonathan Safran Foer
I watched *Everything Is Illuminated* on Amazon Prime and was mesmerized by it. The movie felt different. The pace worked beautifully, and the story captivated me in a strange, unexpected way.
I also visited Odessa a few years before the war and fell in love with the city, so the movie hit me in a very personal way. I thought, if the movie is this good, the book must be something special. I ordered *Everything Is Illuminated* and *Here I Am*.
I was excited when the books arrived. Lately I’ve been reading Hemingway’s short stories and Carver’s *Cathedral* on Shabbat. I love them, but I felt like taking a break and was looking forward to Foer.
I finished *Here I Am* today, and struggled to read each page.
The prose felt unnecessarily flamboyant. Many sentences seemed disconnected from the story and added nothing to the plot. At times, they read like random thoughts. I was not hooked by the main arc either. The novel did not feel as if it were being filtered through an adult’s point of view, or even through the children’s point of view, but through an artificial consciousness that did not feel real.
The view of family, marriage, and adulthood felt oddly immature to me, as if serious adult concerns were being filtered through the mind of a spoiled brat.
I also had trouble with the dialogue. It often didn’t feel natural, and I kept wondering who was speaking, why they were saying it, and whether real people would talk that way.
By the end, I felt so disappointed that I wondered whether I should even read *Everything Is Illuminated*, despite loving the film.
So I’m genuinely asking: what am I missing? For those who admire *Here I Am*, what landed for you? Is this just a matter of taste, or is there something in Foer’s style that I’m not connecting with?
#entertainment
I watched *Everything Is Illuminated* on Amazon Prime and was mesmerized by it. The movie felt different. The pace worked beautifully, and the story captivated me in a strange, unexpected way.
I also visited Odessa a few years before the war and fell in love with the city, so the movie hit me in a very personal way. I thought, if the movie is this good, the book must be something special. I ordered *Everything Is Illuminated* and *Here I Am*.
I was excited when the books arrived. Lately I’ve been reading Hemingway’s short stories and Carver’s *Cathedral* on Shabbat. I love them, but I felt like taking a break and was looking forward to Foer.
I finished *Here I Am* today, and struggled to read each page.
The prose felt unnecessarily flamboyant. Many sentences seemed disconnected from the story and added nothing to the plot. At times, they read like random thoughts. I was not hooked by the main arc either. The novel did not feel as if it were being filtered through an adult’s point of view, or even through the children’s point of view, but through an artificial consciousness that did not feel real.
The view of family, marriage, and adulthood felt oddly immature to me, as if serious adult concerns were being filtered through the mind of a spoiled brat.
I also had trouble with the dialogue. It often didn’t feel natural, and I kept wondering who was speaking, why they were saying it, and whether real people would talk that way.
By the end, I felt so disappointed that I wondered whether I should even read *Everything Is Illuminated*, despite loving the film.
So I’m genuinely asking: what am I missing? For those who admire *Here I Am*, what landed for you? Is this just a matter of taste, or is there something in Foer’s style that I’m not connecting with?
#entertainment
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