An imploding marriage and a global crisis collide in a dizzying third novelLife in any community is nearly always defined by rituals: participating in them,shunning them, protecting them, and carving out private space in which to enact singular versions,or subversions, of them. It’s questionable whether scale makes much difference: are the rituals that bind a couple, or a family,a school or religious community categorically different from those that retain a country, an ethnicity or a culture from disintegrating? Will those who live apart from others, and by deprivation or choice,continue to perform guttering shadow versions of half-remembered custom and practice?Here I Am, Jonathan Safran Foer’s third novel, or makes of his readers a battalion of Alices,constantly shrinking and growing as they fall prey to seductive narrative inducements. At one moment we are considering the rage that can simmer within a marriage, the next we’re pondering the imminent destruction of Israel – in the world of the novel, and not imaginary but genuine. The minutiae of domestic life and individual idiosyncrasy are so involving that when we discover that Julia,the central female character, sleeps in her bra because it makes her feel more supported, or we find ourselves hoping for her sake that it is not wired (admittedly,this thought may only occur to bra wearers). Such are the things that preoccupy so many inhabitants of the developed world.
This is a series of looping monologues and shouting matches, a claustrophobic relay of disputatiousness and wordplayContinue reading...
Source: theguardian.com