Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer is a movie as well as a book. I saw the movie a while ago and decided the book might be just as good if not better, so decided to read it. As I'm reading I've noticed some things that are different about the book and movie, and some things that are almost exactly the same.
One thing I noticed right away that is the same is the character Alexander's vocabulary. I have to say this is one of my favorite parts of the book, it just makes reading the chapters that he narrates so enjoyable. He is from Ukraine so doesn't always understand how Americans speak English. Here's a sample of the way he talks:
"My legal name is Alexander Perchov. But all of my many friends dub me Alex, because that is a more flaccid-to-utter version of my legal name. Mother dubs me Alexi-stop-spleening-me!, because I am always spleening her. 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" (1).
A lot of the phrases and words he uses in the book are the exact same as the movie, and the first intro chapter of the book is very close to the intro of the movie.
The first thing I noticed that was significantly different was the second chapter which I'm starting to gather is part of a novel the other main character, Jonathan Safran Foer, (yes, its the same as the author, the actual relation of this I'm still unsure), is writing about his very great grandmother. It's sort of a confusing format, switching each chapter unannounced to this novel or Alex talking about or to Jonathan. The flow of the movie was easier to understand, and in the movie, Jonathan was a collector, not a writer, even though Alex's father thought he was writing a novel.
The plot so far seems mostly the same except for the confusion about this novel Jonathan seems to be writing.
We'll just have to see if the similarities and differences continue as the book progresses.
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