Everything Remains Dark

Browse Tumblr for more than 30 seconds, and I'll beat you'll come across some reference to Jonathan Safran Foer - most likely, a non-creative posting of cover photos of Everything is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close scrawled in bright vibrant letters. See cover here And, I must admit, the poppy type-art simplicity, was a good seller for me. While both novels continue to circle the Literary cult cultures with quotes and trendy 'likes' I'd be lying if I said I actually knew much of anything about this novel aside from the time I was ready to watch anything Elijah Wood was in and came across his smiling sunflower-glassed visage at Blockbuster. I never did watch the movie though, so it was blindly that I dove into the pages of Everything Is Illuminated this September with no frame of reference for plot, style or literary context.
Long story short - I had no idea what the book was really about, except that Lit-hips loved it.

Taking place in the Ukraine - which might explain the bright blue and yellow, at any rate, the novel follows two or three timelines that weave their way (occasionally connecting) through the rural Ukrainian villages. The first, most 'present-day' story is that of Sasha, a small town Ukrainian young man longing for America, and a life bigger than that which he leads. Manufacturing tales and encounters that boost his image, he rattles off depictions of his daily grand life with poignant humour and charmingly broken english. Capturing that fluent but not North American style of speaking and writing, Safran immediately gains the readers trust through the voice of Sasha, and establishes a relationship where the reader is firmly on his side, and rooting for his success and happiness.

Shortly into this we meet Jonathan Safran Foer the character - an American travelling through the Ukraine in search of one woman from an old photograph, and a connection to his past: the one who saved his father's life during the second world war.

And that's about where my comprehensive overview ends.

Weaving in and out of this present day story - which itself is told partly in the moment, and in part through recounting letters from Sasha to Jonathan after the fact - are tales of the past. The relatives Jonathan is seeking to gain knowledge of have their own chance to tell a story - a stumbling and halting history of their village, and the individuals and encounters which occurred there.

Though in theory the reader is able to keep histories separate, the manner in which each is introduced and revealed leaves much to the imagination, and tends toward simple confusion. I often found myself trying to decipher who was who and related in what way, what time period/frame of the novel I was in, and just what the heck was actually going on.

Because of this, the novel quickly became muddled, confusing, and frustrating. Though there were certainly moments where the reader could sympathize with the characters of the novel, the disconnect of the stories and the narrative style prevented continuity or emotional attachment at the level which the story needed. Without it, the weight of character's emotional baggage, war trauma, and inner turmoils fall flat, missing the reader all together on their downward spiral into muddled reality and confused plot lines.

Rather as though bits an pieces of the novel were left out, revelations and conversations would occur in the novel without explanation or backstory to provide either context or relevancy. As such, I often found myself frustrated with entire sections of the novel, unable to connect to one character or another, or piece together the significance of one story in relation to another.

While I could grasp at the thought that the miss-mash of stories is a commentary or depiction of the way in which history circles, or memories blur in the minds of both individuals and nations - pulling this all together in the collective frame of reference of Jewish life in the Second World War - I'd have to say that's the type of stretch more commonly found in the pages of a second year English Major's dashed together analytic essay. It's time to face the music. Parts of the novel held merit, but as a collective book, it fell short.

I'm not saying each and every aspect needs to be explained in full detail, or that backstories need be outlined for every anecdote, but when the reader is left with an overwhelming feeling of 'so what' or, 'how does this relate to anything again?' you know that something's missing. Finishing the novel with an overwhelming sense of frustration, I have to admit I was disappointed. Sure, Safran illuminates some honest, blunt truths here and there, but generally speaking, I found the very title of the novel a wild irony (the one thing I can say just may have been deliberate) and the resounding conclusion lingering darkness.
And I'm not really sure what to do in the dark.

The Book Thief

The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak appeared mysteriously on my bookshelf one day. I believe it's been sitting there for a while, sorted into the pile of 'novels that do not belong to me' (which primarily hosts books borrowed from my big sister). This, however, appeared on its own.

Rather fitting really, now having read the tale of book thievery, that it should have ended up in my procession as a gift I recently took it down off the shelf to read. I read The Book Thief without knowing anything at all about it. I enjoy reading books that way, it adds to the story without predetermined context or assumptions about the content, and the Book Thief was for me, then, a complete surprise.

A powerful, sorrowful tale of death, destruction, and inevitable dismay, the Book Thief is a curious tale of a unique young girl, and an even more intriguing speaker. Though the narrator is never literally named, it becomes quickly apparent to the reader that the speaker is indeed, the voice of Death - a personification that is both supernatural, but of seemingly human-like form, "You want to know what I truly look like? I'll help you out. Find yourself a mirror while I continue." Death is both expressly inhuman, and yet very much a part of who we are, in it's own perspective, becoming both beyond ourselves, beyond human, and inherently sympathetic as it feels and comprehends hope, sadness, defeat, and most often, fatigue. 

Set in Germany in the second World War, Death is not only a fitting, but a challenging narrator which provides not only insight into the depth of destruction obviously apparent at the time, but a level of individuality as the voice touches on single stories within the ever present context of death. 

Though it could technically be categorize as War literature, or even historical fiction, the Book Thief was unlike any other wartime or holocaust themed novel I had previously read, the focus of the novel so very much on the girl, Leisel, rather than the war itself. Of course, the thoughts and consequences of war were ever present throughout the novel, but they arose as just that - consequences - which moved and shaped the daily activities and lives of the characters within. Leisel felt the sting of war every day, and the reign of Nazi Germany, the omnipresent ruling, was a foreboding darkness over the city and nation. It was through her story that the pain of the war years is made real to the reader, not as a statistic, or a horror story of holocaust victim, but rather through the tale of a loss of innocence and privilege, a loss of comfort and home, and eventually, the simple loss of life. Because Leisel's tale is such a simple one, such a basic one, in essence, it allows the reader to connect and latch their emotions to that of the young girl all the more strongly as she stumbles her way through life and onto Himmel St. 

Death, itself, takes care of the bigger picture. Through simple tales of mass murders and bombings, concentration camps and executions, told from the other side, Death is able to turn the stories from unfathomably horrific, to poignantly tragic - a subtle change which allows readers who have in all likelihood been bombarded with History texts books in school years, to view the deadly acts of world War Two in a new, more personal light. A calm, but sorrowful one. Death does not talk of the bloodlust in the killer's eyes, or the long nights of suffering, but of gently scooping up the souls of the dying humans, whether one by one and slowly, as the victims starve in their beds, mercifully and lightly, as escaping Jews fall to their death over rocky cliffs - dying mid fall, or  of collecting them all at once and in large batches, sifting the souls out of the deadly smoke that rose out of the killing showers of concentration camps. All horrific, all deaths, but all told from a caring, but calm voice who lifts them each out of their bodies, and carries them skyward.  

Using the voice of death provides a unique perspective not only on dying, but on loss and being left behind: "I witness the ones that are left behind, crumbled among the jigsaw puzzles of realization, despair, and surprise. They have punctured hearts. They have beaten lungs". For death, the dying brings relief, whether the dead realize it immediately or not, and it is those left that become the victims, broken by the incomprehension of separation.

The novel, then, centres around not only the inevitable sense of loss and destruction, but on friendship, and the bonds of those fated to live through such times. Introducing the childhood best friend connection with Rudy, Leisel is able to experience, in many ways, a normal relation with her neighbour and soon best friend. It is this bond, the ever growing friendship that exists both despite and because of the environment within which the characters live, that allows the reader a sense of hope and a connection to the story, as the reader invests in the child antics and relations. The friendship, like all those in the novel, is complicated by circumstance, and though street soccer games and playground fights are central, bonds are formed through the stealing of apples - a necessity for the near-starving children, rather than a game of fun - and bonds of mutual longing, as both children experience what it is to have their father figures sent to war. 

Likewise, Leisel's relationship with her Papa and Mama both mirrors that of a child with their parent, but is given further depth by the sheer fact that neither are Leisel's biological parent. Learning to form a connection of extreme love and devotion, the three characters quickly become a bonded family, their love extending past factual family and becoming one knit together by love, loss and circumstance, just as Max is integrated into their hearts in much the same way. 

Providing a window into the life of a Jew in Nazi Germany, Max becomes not only a friend but a liability. A constant balance between a fugitive and a brother, the threads of Max's friendship with Leisel are woven through not only a sense of family and justice, but over an attendance to Hitler Youth, around the loss of her own brother, and through the not only impractical but the forbidden nature of such a bond. It is not only love that holds these characters together, but the reoccurring theme throughout the novel of Words. 

Words, as any reader will know, are an extremely powerful tool. Both a weapon and a form of reconciliation, or comfort, words can connect and severe ties, and infiltrate minds. Words are the birthplace of so many actions, and so much of the movements of Nazi Germany. And Leisel herself writes after reflecting upon both her habit of book stealing and of writing, "I have hated the words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right."

The Book Thief itself uses words in much the same way, highlighting and pushing them, contorting them to depict both the good and the bad, as well as highlighting the consequences of words, both said and unsaid, and their effect on those on which who's ears they fall. From simple spelling lessons, to a book which Death itself carries in its pocket, literature and language (spoken and written) is shown for what it truly is - a power and weapon beyond understanding which can shape the minds of followers, and a hope on which to cling to, when all else falls. 

It is with a unique voice and brilliantly executed perspective - that of the character and narrator of Death - that Zuszak sheds light on the dark times of Germany in war, and reawakens an emotional connection between reader and characters, refreshing what has become numb and desensitized in a violence-based society.