Treat yourself to Jonathan Safran Foer: Everything is Illuminated

It was only a few weeks ago I despaired of ever finding a book I truly loved again.

I thought I'd read too many books, become far too cynical and finally realised there was no such thing as an original idea.

But no - here comes Safran Foer with the story he originally worked on as his university dissertation. 

And here comes the part where any traditional reviewer would tell you the plot... except, as you know, I'm not a traditional reviewer so I'm not going to tell you the plot.

I will tell you this is the story of a small Ukrainian village called either Sofiowka or Trachimbrod depending on your preference, I suspect you'll go with Trachimbrod.

It follows many comical and sad elements in the village's history (it's actually a shtetl which is a predominantly Jewish settlement) and follows it's progress up until World War II.

The village's characters and traditions are superbly drawn.

In the meantime we also have two moden day heroes - a familiar lad searching for a missing piece in his family history and his brilliant translator, Alex, who hides his own family secret - and not the one you would think either.

Safran Foer chucks every literary trick he can manage at the text and sometimes it is annoying and a bit weird.

You can feel you're reading something irrelevant. You might be. But then again you might be reading something absolutely key. Read everything carefully because it will all be illuminated.

I've already said I loved this book and would now call it one of my all-time favourites. It was sad in a completely unexpected way and in an expected way too - the Holocaust looms like an ever-present spectre throughout.

I skimmed a few other reviews and found the biggest complaint with this novel was that the critics adored it so much no novel could possibly live up to such expectation.

So with this in mind, disregard everything I've said. It's rubbish. Now go buy it.