"; if(is_file("header.php")) include "header.php"; else include "../header.php"; ?>

Read this one already The writing is lovely, the insights are sharp, the humor is refreshing. Those who can only criticize it by attacking the author ("too young, too privileged, too inexperienced") prove only that they hate the imagination. The book is precise and moving and who cares if the author has "lived" (as if anyone could determine what that meant). However, Foer already wrote this book. It was called Everything Is Illuminated, and it was amazing. Consider: both books feature a central narrator with a highly evolved adult mind expressed through broken or corrupted English (in EII it was a Ukrainian writing in English, here, it's a precocious 9 year-old); both books feature a protagonist searching for something elusive in their past; both feature an elder travelling companion with a secret; both are interspersed with "magical-realist" narratives told by the protagonists' unknown ancestors. The books are incredibly similar, in good ways and in bad. I think Foer is a lovely writer and an acute observer. I hope his next book will be its own, instead of another retread.