A monumental new audiobook from the bestselling author of Everything Is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer's Here I Am
In the book of Genesis, when God calls out, "Abraham!" before ordering him to sacrifice his son, Isaac, Abraham responds, "Here I am." Later, when Isaac calls out, "My father!" before asking him why there is no animal to slaughter, Abraham responds, "Here I am."
How do we fulfill our conflicting duties as father, husband, and son; wife and mother; child and adult? Jew and American? How can we claim our own identities when our lives are linked so closely to others'? These are the questions at the heart of Jonathan Safran Foer's first novel in eleven years—a work of extraordinary scope and heartbreaking intimacy.
Unfolding over four tumultuous weeks in present-day Washington, D.C., Here I Am is the story of a fracturing family in a moment of crisis. As Jacob and Julia Bloch and their three sons are forced to confront the distances between the lives they think they want and the lives they are living, a catastrophic earthquake sets in motion a quickly escalating conflict in the Middle East. At stake is the meaning of home—and the fundamental question of how much aliveness one can bear.
Showcasing the same high-energy inventiveness, hilarious irreverence, and emotional urgency that readers and critics loved in his earlier work, Here I Am is Foer's most searching, hard-hitting, and grandly entertaining novel yet. It not only confirms Foer's stature as a dazzling literary talent but reveals a novelist who has fully come into his own as one of the most important writers in America.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
September 6, 2016 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9781427275905
- File size: 489208 KB
- Duration: 16:59:10
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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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. -
Audie winner Ari Fliakos's task in narrating Foer's sprawling novel is to capture the distinct intonations of four generations of Jacob Bloch's family. His approach is to quietly interpret their interior monologues and to dramatize their rapid-fire dialogues. He renders whole this self-referential and self-absorbed, as well as quick-witted and hyper-aware, Jewish-American family, while illuminating numerous excursions into Jewish history and lore. Fliakos enlivens this passel of neurotics. The audiobook traces the Bloch family's stories of varied crises: An Armageddon-like earthquake threatens Israel's existence, Jacob and Julia Bloch's marriage dissolves, and Jacob's aged Holocaust-survivor grandfather commits suicide. Fliakos masterfully weaves the multiple perspectives (and many accents, including Israeli and Iranian) of this fragmented work into a cohesive and powerful audiobook. A.D.M. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine -
December 5, 2016
Foer’s novel requires a very talented narrator—and it got one. The prose is fast, forceful, funny, and friendly, and actor Fliakos handles it all superbly. He distinguishes children of different ages as well as fathers, grandparents, and even great-grandparents. He catches the nuances and emotional intricacies of each character’s thoughts and conversations, while his diction is perfect but not intrusive. He’s especially good at highlighting the gentle humor and major absurdities of the novel. The only difficulty for the listener is that Foer constantly raises thought-provoking questions about the meaning of friendship, marriage, family, country, religion, happiness, and angst, forcing the listener to stop the audio from time to time to mull over these issues. Listeners will find themselves hitting the pause button to think things through, but will remain eager to resume Fliakos’s wonderful performance. A Farrar, Straus and Giroux hardcover.
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