If you want to know why I am always spleening her, it is because I am always elsewhere with friends and disseminating so much currency, and performing so many things that can spleen a mother.Ī mother would have to be 'manufacturing Zs' not to know that Alexander is desperate to 'get carnal' with a girl, or that he loves anything to do with Manhattan’s Greenwich 'shtetl.' Alex is a bundle of contradictions and inadvertent insights. Mother dubs me Alexi-stop-spleening-me, because I am always spleening her. But all of my friends dub me Alex, because that is a more flaccid-to-utter version of my legal name. He is an amusing rogue who provides the book with a unique vibe. Alex is a young, self-consciously hip Ukrainian who embodies post-Soviet culture. I’m not a fan of written dialect, but Safran Foer has gone beyond presenting odd spellings and strange random words: he has constructed a new language (let’s call it Russienglish). Safran Foer constructs a brilliant parallel narrative using Alex’s mangled English.

The Sancho Panza of this story is Alexander Perchov.

Unfortunately, the only thing that Jonathan has to identify this woman with is an old photograph that he found in his late grandfather’s personal effects. The hero of the book–the author’s fictional alter ego is also named Jonathan Safran Foer–is on a quest to the Ukraine to find a woman named Augustine, who saved his grandfather from the Nazis. Think of a Jewish-American version of Don Quixote. At the heart of Safran Foer’s narrative beats the classic road-trip novel, replete with unlikely buddies.

Safran foer everything is illuminated