A Maxim Jakubowski selected title.
Not a crime novel or fantasy even if extraneous factors like a terrible earthquake that devastates the state of Israel and causes its enemies to ally to force its final destruction, but a terribly idiosyncratic first novel in 10 years from the author of EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED which I was a great admirer of. The aforesaid cataclysm serves as a background for the slow, finely-etched falling apart at the seams of a Jewish family in Brooklyn. At times truly hilarious and with offspring even more literate and annoying than those in the OUTNUMBERED TV sitcom, this is also a serious examination of modern angst and, at the same time, a devastating X-ray of the intellectual male of the species (as closely modelled on the author himself who went through a divorce with wife and writer Nicole Kraus during the gestation of the novel). It's a book that people will love and hate, a long book, a major book, a curious book. But who said novels were mere entertainment (although at times I did laugh out very loud...)? ~ Maxim Jakubowski
| Primary Genre | Modern and Contemporary Fiction |
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Win a Copy of The Sisters of Hope Square by Faith Hogan and a Bucket List Scratch Book
Closing date: 04/07/2026
THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From the bestselling author of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Everything is Illuminated and We are the Weather - a rich and moving novel about modern family lives and the ties that bind 'Towering and glorious: a tale of social, familial and marital breakdown and the End of the World. The funniest literary novel I have ever read' The Times 'A rich, beautifully written, ambitious and grandly moving novel, which looks both at the world at large and at the deepest concerns of individual lives' Evening Standard 'Lays bare the interior of a marriage with such intelligence and deep feeling and pitiless clarity, it's impossible to read it and not re-examine your own family' Time 'Astonishing. So sad and so funny and so wry' Scotland on Sunday Jacob and Julia Bloch are about to be tested . . . By Jacob's grandfather, who won't go quietly into a retirement home. By the family reunion, that everyone is dreading. By their son's heroic attempts to get expelled. And by the sexting affair that will rock their marriage. A typical modern American family, the Blochs cling together even as they are torn apart. Which is when catastrophe decides to strike . . . Confronting the enduring question of what it means to be human with inventiveness, playfulness and compassion, Here I Am is a great American family novel for our times, an unmissable read for fans of Jonathan Franzen and Michael Chabon, a masterpiece about how we live now.
Here I Am features in the following genres: Modern and Contemporary Fiction, Family Drama, eBooks of the Month, General Fiction, Fiction, Recommendations
Here I Am is available in , Paperback, Hardback
Here I Am was written by Jonathan Safran Foer and published by Penguin Books Ltd
Here I Am has 704 pages
