A stunning debut

Twenty-four-year-old whiz kid Jonathan Safran Foer's debut is good enough to go down well with everyone - apart, perhaps, from other budding young scribblers.

Not that it is perfect. But, pseudy wobbles aside, it is irritatingly accomplished.

The main character is a fictionalised version of Jonathan himself, who journeys to the Ukraine in search of the woman who saved his grandfather from Nazi capture.

His experiences are filtered through the earnest historical epic he writes as a result, and the letters of his local guide, Alex, a malaprop-prone sweetie who comes with a blind grandfather and his jumpy guide dog - "Seeing Eye bitch" in Alex-speak.

For a while it is hard not to wish Foer had stuck with just one of his narrators, specifically Alex. But suddenly the two strands come together, with surprisingly moving results.