Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer

Editor’s Review
From Publishers Weekly
Oskar Schell, hero of this brilliant follow-up to Foer’s bestselling Everything Is Illuminated, is a nine-year-old amateur inventor, jewelry designer, astrophysicist, tambourine player and pacifist. Like the second-language narrator of Illuminated, Oskar turns his naïvely precocious vocabulary to the understanding of historical tragedy, as he searches New York for the lock that matches a mysterious key left by his father when he was killed in the September 11 attacks, a quest that intertwines with the story of his grandparents, whose lives were blighted by the firebombing of Dresden. Foer embellishes the narrative with evocative graphics, including photographs, colored highlights and passages of illegibly overwritten text, and takes his unique flair for the poetry of miscommunication to occasionally gimmicky lengths, like a two-page soliloquy written entirely in numerical code. Although not quite the comic tour de force that Illuminated was, the novel is replete with hilarious and appalling passages, as when, during show-and-tell, Oskar plays a harrowing recording by a Hiroshima survivor and then launches into a Poindexterish disquisition on the bomb’s “charring effect.” It’s more of a challenge to play in the same way with the very recent collapse of the towers, but Foer gambles on the power of his protagonist’s voice to transform the cataclysm from raw current event to a tragedy at once visceral and mythical. Unafraid to show his traumatized characters’ constant groping for emotional catharsis, Foer demonstrates once again that he is one of the few contemporary writers willing to risk sentimentalism in order to address great questions of truth, love and beauty.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Adult/High School-Oskar Schell is not your average nine-year-old. A budding inventor, he spends his time imagining wonderful creations. He also collects random photographs for his scrapbook and sends letters to scientists. When his father dies in the World Trade Center collapse, Oskar shifts his boundless energy to a quest for answers. He finds a key hidden in his father’s things that doesn’t fit any lock in their New York City apartment; its container is labeled “Black.” Using flawless kid logic, Oskar sets out to speak to everyone in New York City with the last name of Black. A retired journalist who keeps a card catalog with entries for everyone he’s ever met is just one of the colorful characters the boy meets. As in Everything Is Illuminated (Houghton, 2002), Foer takes a dark subject and works in offbeat humor with puns and wordplay. But Extremely Loud pushes further with the inclusion of photographs, illustrations, and mild experiments in typography reminiscent of Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions (Dell, 1973). The humor works as a deceptive, glitzy cover for a fairly serious tale about loss and recovery. For balance, Foer includes the subplot of Oskar’s grandfather, who survived the World War II bombing of Dresden. Although this story is not quite as evocative as Oskar’s, it does carry forward and connect firmly to the rest of the novel. The two stories finally intersect in a powerful conclusion that will make even the most jaded hearts fall.-Matthew L. Moffett, Northern Virginia Community College, Annandale
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Other Reviews
“Inventive and imaginative…Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close…displays the gifts – Foer’s energy, imagination, ambition, and humor – that made his first book, Everything is Illuminated, such a success.” – Francine Prose, People, Critic’s Choice

“Is there a novel that, in a fit of envy, Holden Caufield, Huck Finn, Harriet the Spy, and Krazy Kat – all of the above – might long to enter? And would feel at home in? Yes! Jonathan Safran Foer’s funny, tender, tragic, ingeniously imaginative Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close has all the kick and brio of a child’s wild vision and child’s wild hurt. Foer’s nine year old Oskar Schell, confronting the cataclysms of our time, is an American original.” – Cynthia Ozick

“Jonathan Safran Foer’s second novel is everything that one hoped it would be – ambitious, pyrotechnic, riddling, and above all, in its portrait of orphaned Oskar, extremely moving. The powerful emotions generated feel deserved, not borrowed. An exceptional achievement. – Salman Rushdie

My Review: The book made me sad. I felt so much sympathy and compassion for this young 9 year old boy who loses his father. His entire family is dysfunctional, beginning with his grandmother and grandfather. They are a very odd family, yet there is so much love and caring. Too many tragedies occurred in two generations and it left them all emotionally handicapped. Foer has a very gifted imagination and his use of illustrations and other techniques to write his story is top-notch. It’s a good book to recommend to any child that has lost a parent. In fact it’s a good book to read for anyone who has lost a loved one. The book is like tragic comedy. Foer tries to keep it up tempo and at times humorous, but the overall overarching theme is one of tragedy, loss, and dysfunction. This is the first fiction book I’ve read that had to do with the tragedy of 9/11. It was very well-written. You fall in love with Oskar Schell. He’s a beautiful, angelic boy who only wears white. Your heart just goes out to him. You feel his pain and frustration. I wanted to cry during some parts. It gets you emotionally involved. The ending was surprising and left you hoping for happiness to once again enter Oskar’s life. A very tender, imaginative, yet tragic book. I give it four out of five stars.

Tags: 9/11, book review, books, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer