Book 10: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Book 10: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Writer: Jonathan Safran Foer
Genre: Drama
Number of pages: 368
Read This Year: 2253
My rating of the book, F- [worst] to A [best]: B
Short description/summary of the book: from Amazon
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.
My Thoughts: Jonathan Safran Foer’s second novel is nearly impossible to describe. The book is, in as simple a description as I can provide, the story of a nine-year-old boy whose father died on September 11, 2001. Oskar Schell has spent the months since then in constant depression, made only worse by his prodigious imagination and intelligence. Some time after his father’s death, Oskar finds an envelope containing a key and bearing a single word: “Black.”
Oskar’s search for the lock the key opens is the main concern of the book, but the writing is really much deeper and more complex than the description would allow. Much of the book is told in the pages Oskar’s book, Stuff That Happened to Me, written in a very loose, flowing stream-of-consciousness fashion, including the photos and illustrations Oskar placed in his book. Other chapters are told from the perspective of his grandmother, and still more from the pages of notebooks kept by his long-absent grandfather, who walked out before Oskar’s father was born.
The stream-of-consciousness style makes the book a remarkably challenging read - at times quick and flowing, and at other times dense and demanding of the reader. The characters are challenging as well - Oskar himself is a bizarre, damaged soul, but everyone around him suffers from their own peculiarities. One character gradually loses the ability to speak, one is compelled to bury books, another has driven a nail into his bed every day since his wife’s death and doesn’t know why.
Much like the characters, the book itself is an enigma. It’s compelling, but I can’t really explain why that is the case. It’s haunting, disturbing and beautiful all at the same time. It’s not an easy book to read, but if you want to challenge yourself, it’s worthwhile.
In the Queue: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling & The 10th Circle by Jodi Picoult