Punctuated Post: Jonathan Safran Foer's Here I Am

Note the Arizona-themed bookmark
cross-stitched by my mother.

This book is long enough, so I will keep my thoughts to a Punctuated Post. I do not regret a single minute of the time I spent reading the nearly 600 pages of Jonathan Safran Foer's latest novel, Here I Am. In fact, most of it felt fairly fast-paced. There is a great deal of dialogue, and various narrative strategies keep the pages turning. If anything slows down the reading pace, it is the need to process some of the deep emotional episodes that sustain the book. From family to catastrophe, this book covers the gamut of heart-wrenching scenarios. And, I suppose it is this very breadth that became, in my opinion, the greatest weakness of the book. When a book is about everything, it sometimes feels like it is about nothing. Is this book about the father character, Jacob? His family? Dealing with crises? Politics and political catastrophe? Religion? Death and loss? I am never one to shy away from a long book with a complex plot, yet a can't fight the suspicion that this book would be even better if it were about just a little less.

While I would have wished for a little more focus to guide me to the core message that the author wanted the reader to walk away with, there were little literary nuggets throughout the book that served as a huge payoff for the reader. I'll end with one sentiment that resounded with me.

Jonathan Safran Foer, Here I Am, p. 493

Foer, Jonathan Safran. Here I Am. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2016.