Everything is Illuminated

Title: Everything is Illuminated
Author: Jonathan Safran Foer

Genre: fiction
What they said: Links to reviews

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What I say:

As I read it I wanted to sink. From the chair to the floor to beneath the desk to flat against the tile. I wanted to be without clothing but I couldn't even take off my shoes. I wanted to be swallowed whole while my heart broke. My whole heart. I wanted to be in love, to be loved, to make love to reaffirm my ability to live, to remind myself that life begets life that it is not always - though so often - that death begets death, to shine some coital light of my own
to drown
I drank it like so much water, undoing a miracle that may or may never have happened
This All Happened

I needed someone something to wrap it/him/herself around me to couple with me as we can only do when the earth swallows us whole and breaks our entire communal heart.

I needed to reach for life before death reached me
the cracking sound
my heart made
when it broke in two
Something so violent - so silent
unable to withstand this, unable to contain it. The presure on my heart's walls that came from within and without.

The depth of this -- proves
the depth of the soul

~a m i~