Here I Am

Starred review from June 27, 2016
Great-grandfather Isaac Bloch's voice opens Foer's intensely imagined and richly rewarding novel. What follows is a teeming saga of members of the patriarch's family: Isaac's son, Irv, a xenophobic, self-righteous defender of Israel who claims that "the world will always hate Jews"; his grandson, Jacob, achingly aware that his decade-plus marriage to Julia is breaking down; and Jacob and Julia's son Sam, whose imminent bar mitzvah may be cancelled if he doesn't apologize for the obscene material discovered in his desk at Hebrew school. The Blochs are distinctively upper-middle-class American in their needs, aspirations, and place in the 21st century. Foer excels in rendering domestic conversation: the banter and quips, the anger and recrimination, and Jacob and Julia's deeply felt guilt that their divorce will damage their three sons. Things are bad enough in the Bloch family when world events intervene: a major earthquake levels the Middle East, spreading catastrophic damage among the Arab states and Israel. In an imaginative segment, Foer depicts the reaction of the media when Israel ceases helping its Arab neighbors to save its own people and the Arab states unite and prepare for attack. The irony is evident: Irv, the fearmonger, has been proven correct. Foer (Everything Is Illuminated) fuses these complex strands with his never-wavering hand. Throughout, his dark wit drops in zingers of dialogue, leavening his melancholy assessments of the loneliness of human relationships and a world riven by ethnic hatred. He poses several thorny moral questions, among them how to have religious faith in the modern world, and what American Jews' responsibilities are toward Israel. That he can provide such a redemptive denouement, at once poignant, inspirational, and compassionate, is the mark of a thrillingly gifted writer. Agent: Nicole Aragi, Aragi Inc.

July 1, 2016

In Foer's first novel in 11 years (after Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close), Julia and Jacob Bloch's marriage, once buoyed by the determination always to act with purpose, has been worn thin by a slow withholding and the demands of daily life. Jacob writes ruefully for television, steel-spined Julia is fed up with his timidity, and now son Sam has been accused by the rabbi of writing a list of offensive epithets. As Jacob insists that his son couldn't have done it and Julia retorts that Sam must apologize, it's not just Sam's upcoming bar mitzvah that is threatened. The Blochs' marriage is on a collision course, powerfully framed by reference to the biblical story of Abraham and Isaac, which makes this richly conceived work more than another tale of marital woe. As Sam himself explains, Abraham answered "Here I am" when God demanded the sacrifice of Isaac and when Isaac asked why they had brought no animal to the altar, with Abraham showing a willingness to be fully present for both in a way that Sam's own parents had failed to show him when he was accused of hate speech. Inattention is its own bad move, and as we see throughout, as when Jacob's Israeli cousin scrambles as the Middle East explodes, "not to have a choice is also a choice." VERDICT Rigorous questions within an accessible story; highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, 3/7/16.]--Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from July 1, 2016
Family and what it means to be Jewish, subjects of infinite complexity, are novelist Foer's preoccupation and inspiration. In his first novel in 11 yearsa far longer, edgier, and more caustically funny tale than Everything Is Illuminated (2002) and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005)he choreographs the disintegration of the once blissfully close marriage of architect Julia and TV writer Jacob, exploring how their changing relationship affects their three sons (so cannily portrayed), especially the eldest, Sam, who escapes whenever possible into a virtual alternative world, Other Life. Foer has enhanced his mastery of rapidly volleying dialogue and churning inner monologues and raised them to torrential proportions as the Blochs of Washington, D.C., relentlessly analyze and argue about every feeling, thought, occurrence, and action with Talmudic exactitude. By mining elements of his life to construct the many-chambered domestic tale, Foer achieves the ringing clarity of authenticity. But for all his focus on familial intricacy (including attachment to an aging dog), intellectual musings, rogue eroticism, and various neuroses, Foer is also grappling with the larger forces of anti-Semitism and war. The novel's provocative title is taken from Genesis. When God thunders, Abraham! Abraham declares, Here I am. He is present and obedient; he will even sacrifice his son. This total commitment is anathema to Foer's argumentative, fiercely inquisitive American characters, recalcitrance amplified when Jacob's Israeli cousins, Tamir and his younger son, Barak, come to visit, catalyzing a running comparison between cushy American Jewish lives and the rigors of battle-ready Israelis. This contrast is further intensified when a major earthquake strikes the Jewish state, emboldening its enemies to attack. What are Jacob and Julia's duties to the Jewish homeland? To their family and to themselves? As Sam contemplates Abraham's predicament in preparation for his bar mitzvah, he thinks, it is primarily about who we are wholly there for, and how that, more than anything else, defines our identity. Foer's voluminous (verging on overblown), polyphonic, and boldly comedic tale of one family's quandaries astutely and forthrightly confronts humankind's capacity for the ludicrous and the profound, cruelty and love.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)