There’s a lot going on in Jonathan Safran Foer’s Here I Am – an earthquake followed by a war in the Middle East; the death of a family patriarch; an unwanted bar mitzvah; a crumbling marriage. But through all this ‘busyness’, you quickly understand that Here I Am is Foer’s ode to family and his Jewish faith.

“Parents don’t have the luxury of being reasonable, not any more than a religious person does. What can make religious people and parents so utterly insufferable is also what makes religion and parenthood so utterly beautiful: the all-or-nothing wager. The faith.”

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