J.S. Foer - Incredibly Loud and Extremely Close.
I always though 9/10 was a good way to describe a quiet, non-eventful day. I never thought much about the catastrophe - apart from the obvious polite thoughts.
Even going there was not quite revelatory, standing on that spot right in the heart of Manhattan - they still clear out debris, and the place is so sinister. But I could never relate to it - in my own personal way - unless I read this book.
The story has a very simple beginning and a very complicated end. And a hell of a bizarre centrefold! One very intelligent (to the point of being autistic) boy gets on the quest to find out as much as he can about how his father died in 9/11 catastrophe. “Oskar - this is my name - don’t wear it out”. The boy, who feels “incredibly panicky” in lifts and subways, and has to take cabs - which he can’t afford, but he sends the money for the ride just as promised.
The boy, who “wears extremely heavy boots” and has given keys to his Upper East Side apartment to the mailman, the concierge and the pizza man. There is also Grandma, who lives with the renter, who is somewhat imaginary. There are letters to the “Unborn Child”, and there is scrap booking. There are sentences a page long, and there are characters, who are just as nuts. Bizarre! Bizarre! Bizarre!
However, there is a very sweet end. Remember the man falling out of WTC? Well, in his album “Things that happen to me” Oskar rearranges the order of pages - and the man just flies up and away. Far, far away.
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Originally published at eugenia.co.nz.