Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Oct 19, 2009

brian rated it

well, i'm naturally drawn to those people who are overwhelmed by existence, by people who hurt too easily; who, for them, life seems to be almost too much: for whom the unceasing cacophony of thought and memory and idea is just too painful and all the cruelty and the violence is inconceivable and the mystery of life and love and foreverness and the past and all of it is just overwhelming to the point in which one wishes one could scream so loud that it would just make it all go away, that one co...morewell, i'm naturally drawn to those people who are overwhelmed by existence, by people who hurt too easily; who, for them, life seems to be almost too much: for whom the unceasing cacophony of thought and memory and idea is just too painful and all the cruelty and the violence is inconceivable and the mystery of life and love and foreverness and the past and all of it is just overwhelming to the point in which one wishes one could scream so loud that it would just make it all go away, that one could exorcise all of it, that one could just somehow leave, just leave their body and leave the planet and get away from all the people and all the loss and all the memories that sit in the stomach and the chest and the throat and just get away from death and from the monotony of everyday life and also from the hysteria of those moments, those big lifechangers, and leave behind the fact that he will die and that everyone he knows or ever has known will one day be a slab of meat in a wooden box. it's too much sometimes.

and fuck if you are a writer that can somehow come up with the means to tell a story, a small story even, to summarize the totality of what it means to be alive on planet earth and to live amongst and around all these people and memories and ghosts and all the potential and possibilities... well, shit. how did this young twerp do it? and it's not perfect. yeah, it is precious at times, and, yes, he doesn't always mix tone that well, there are scenes that feel heightened when they could've played straight to more powerful effect, and blahblahblah. but fuck if the flaws don't add to the whole. i'd be suspicious if it was perfect, because it's a messy affair, this life thing. and that's what this book is about. it's a big fucking mess. but what are you going to do? leave it? no. you stick around. and you find those people you love and you never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever let go. and if they're taken from you or leave you, you rail and rant against your god or your country or their country or a cold uncaring universe or nature or dumb luck and you scream and you cry and threaten suicide or murder and pull out your hair and punch cement walls and then -- then you quiet down and mend your knuckles and straighten your hair and put down the gun and stop guzzling the bourbon and you get your shit together and you move on.
but you're never the same. (less)

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Apr 01, 2009

Kim rated it

Recommends it for: everyone

Recommended to Kim by: Montambo

Shelves: the-kids-are-all-right, gmba, cultured, need-to-revisit, holy-shit, favorite-authors, mmviii, favorites

There are books that affect me and then there are books that kill me. This falls in the latter. I cried on the couch, I cried on the bus, I cried at stoplights, I cried at work.. I cried more over this book than I did on the actual September 11th. Then I became upset that this piece of fiction could invoke such melancholia. Can I use the excuse of being in shock during the actual event? That it seemed like a movie?

I have no excuse.

Flash back: The second half of ...more

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Jan 25, 2012

Ben rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: audio, read-in-2010

There must be something wrong with me. I’m not as smart as my goodreader friends. I lack empathy. My humor is deficient. I have no compassion. And I suck at life.

Of the 40 of you “friends” who read this, this is how you rated it:

5-stars: 18 people
4-stars: 13 people
3-stars: 7 people
2-stars: 2 people
1-star: 0 people

Something wrong with me indeed.

(Or something wrong with all of you.)

No. I didn’t finish it. I...more

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Aug 05, 2007

Amanda rated it

Shelves: all_time_favs, read_summer_07, common-reading-experience

Today while tutoring, I've met with one student right at 1 and another at 4. In between those times, I read Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Perhaps that was not the smartest thing to do...

Sometimes I find the book so funny that I laugh out loud. Which is fine if I had a quiet laugh, but I don't. And I tutor in a common meeting space which is a center room with offices surrounding it. Clearly, everyone in the office knew I was getting paid to laugh at what I was reading. I felt b...more

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Sep 22, 2010

Sparrow rated it

Recommends it for: those who haven't read History of Love

Recommended to Sparrow by: This guy (Eric?) who I worked with at BN

Shelves: favorites, classic-or-cannonical, influenced-me, reviewed

Maybe it goes without saying that we write differently in letters than we do in email or text. Something about putting pen to paper makes a handwritten letter more intimate and less imposing than electronic media. We take off the tin-foil hat. Our mistakes are not made invisible by a backspace key, but crossed out with our own hand. We reveal ourselves. And letters to people we love are that much more intimate and revealing, even sentimental. We create something, a product, that you can ho...moreMaybe it goes without saying that we write differently in letters than we do in email or text. Something about putting pen to paper makes a handwritten letter more intimate and less imposing than electronic media. We take off the tin-foil hat. Our mistakes are not made invisible by a backspace key, but crossed out with our own hand. We reveal ourselves. And letters to people we love are that much more intimate and revealing, even sentimental. We create something, a product, that you can hold in your hand, and then send it off, like a little piece of ourselves. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is Jonathan Safran Foer’s love letter to New York City.

I’ve seen some readers complain that its sentimentality is manipulative, and even though I can imagine reading the book that way, I can’t understand it. I think this book is one of the most beautiful explorations of love, grief, and humanity that I’ve ever experienced. It’s been years since I last read it, and I wanted to read it again before reviewing, but I’m not really at an emotional place where I could take it right now. What is love without death? And sometimes both are too harsh to look in the face. I have to make a nothing place for them. But I’ve had this review percolating in my brain, and I felt like I needed to share it, even though it’s only impressions.

Traditional wedding vows summarize pretty economically that classic feeling of being in love. I will love you in sickness and health, for richer or poorer, till death do us part. It’s that feeling of “I loved you before I knew you, and I will love you after we’re dust.” Foer does something similar here. He’s saying to the City, “I loved you as a child. I love you as an old man, as an old woman. I loved you when I only had a key to your secrets, but didn’t know what door it belonged to. I love you in the health of family and in the sickness of grief.” And somehow, for right or wrong, it is more meaningful to be reminded of love when we are at our most worthless and broken. This love letter takes place just after the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center, and it gives me the feeling of Foer sewing up the wounds of the city.

I lived in New York a couple of years before the September 11th attack, and I hated the city. When the attacks happened, I lived in one of the religiously fanatical far-away places where a lot of people felt, secretly or openly, that New York deserved to have a symbol of its decadence cut down. I lived in Oregon. People would say that “we” brought this upon ourselves, but, despite my aversion to New York City, that always offended me. New York is not “we” to anyone in Oregon. “We” is Rainie Falls and Mount Pisgah and Voodoo Doughnuts and Dutch Bros and Rice Hill. “We” is the Caveman statue and Powell’s and the stupid Enchanted Forest. The World Trade Center is just as foreign to “us” as Afghanistan or Nicaragua, Dresden or Hiroshima. Not only do I not believe that anyone, English speaking or not, brings that kind of devastation upon themselves, I also do not believe that it is “our” right to speak to the justice of that kind of event. I love where I live, and I feel that same kind of love and care in Foer talking about where he lives. I think it is beautiful. I think that it is not possible for a place that could be so beloved, no matter how much I dislike it myself, to have deserved bombing. I would say the same about Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Dresden, and Hiroshima.

On a lighter and more bitchy note, Nicole Krauss is married to Foer, and her book The History of Love is very, very similar to Extremely Loud. I think that if you’ve read one of those, you can’t really like the other, unfortunately. They are both, to some extent, about the injustices of growing up, but Krauss takes the tone of overcoming adversity, where I think Foer takes the tone of reconciliation and healing. Maybe they both have all of those elements. I’m one thumb up, one thumb down on History of Love, but words cannot tell you how much I love Extremely Loud. Some of the similarities are in the family phrasings, some are in the plots. You can see how they are very different writers who suffer from the disadvantage of living in the same house with another great writer. It’s stressful.

Extremely Loud is American folklore. It is regional, but can’t be held responsible for it. Not that regionalism is necessarily a turn-off, but we want to read about ourselves. Cultures that are familiar but foreign can be suspicious. At the same time, this story does bring me into the culture that was devastated by 9/11. I was not the target of the 9/11 attacks, just like Oskar, the protagonist of this book, was not. But also, we both were. We both are Americans, despite our foreignness. It is one of those muddles that political boundaries make out of culture. We are foreigners and family at the same time. It’s confusing and figurative and sentimental. In fact, all of this, everything in this book, is more figurative and sentimental than many readers care for, but what do you expect from a love letter?
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Sep 01, 2007

Lucy rated it

Recommends it for: open-minded readers who don't mind the unconventional

I picked this book up two days ago to read the first page (I personally think you can tell a lot about a book from the first page) and was hooked. I'm in the middle of another book, which is a good book, but the jarring nature of the prose reeled me in. The first chapter is called, "What the?" which is exactly what I was thinking. I was instantly reminded of another great book, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, where you actually experience the book as well as read it. ...moreI picked this book up two days ago to read the first page (I personally think you can tell a lot about a book from the first page) and was hooked. I'm in the middle of another book, which is a good book, but the jarring nature of the prose reeled me in. The first chapter is called, "What the?" which is exactly what I was thinking. I was instantly reminded of another great book, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, where you actually experience the book as well as read it. While I wouldn't want every book to be written like that, because it's a bit like riding a roller coaster in the dark with strobe lights, it sure is fun every once in a while.

Jonathan Safran Foer, the author, writes the tale of a nine year old boy named Oskar Schell, whose father was in the World Trade Center when the planes flew into them on September 11th. I think its fair to say that the boy becomes extremely troubled after his father's death, but with the unconventional childhood he had, it didn't take much to push him over the edge. His father was an atheist and Oskar wasn't raised to believe in an afterlife or heaven or that people have spirits.

When no body is recovered, his mother buries an empty coffin and she and Oskar have this conversation: "It's just an empty box." "It's more than an empty box." "Why would I want to spend eternity next to an empty box?" Mom said, "His spirit is there," and that made me really angry. I told her, "Dad didn't have a spirit! He had cells!" "His memory is there." "His memory is there," I said, pointing at my head. "Dad had a spirit," she said, like she was rewinding a bit in our conversation. I told her, "He had cells, and now they're on rooftops, and in the river, and in the lungs of millions of people around New York, who breathe him every time they speak!"

The book also tells the story of Oskar's paternal grandparents. The narration changes when both tell their own story. When his grandmother writes, there are no paragraphs and no quotations marks. Lots of odd spacing and most sentences get their own line. She's kind of crazy herself which you know by how she reacts when watching Oskar in his school's play of Hamlet and her conversations with Oskar. Oskar's grandfather...well...that's when you really see crazy. The author uses the most license with him and parts of the book are downright bizarre. Like the eight pages with nothing on them. Or when he starts to write smaller and smaller so that two entire pages are just dark black scribbles because some many words are on top of themselves.

It's more than just tricks on the page, however. The story is really about grief and how Oskar chooses to grieve for his father and how Oskar's grandparents grieved after losing much of what they loved when their city of Dresden was bombed in World War II.

When Oskar finds a key in an envelope with the word "Black" written on it inside a vase in his parent's bedroom, he sets out to discover what it unlocks. He goes about this by finding every person with the last name of "Black" in the five boroughs of New York City and spends almost a year going out on the weekends to ask Aaron, Abel, Amber etc. if they know anything about the key. A few interesting characters and stories get told through this storyline, but the real beauty of this book is how it made me remember and react to the horror of 9/11 again. You kind of forget....with the War on Terror, and the Iraq War and all of the stories that have happened during the last six years how horrible it was to watch those burning buildings go down on live TV. The last 14 pages of the book are pictures Oskar got off of a Portuguese web site that had a picture of a man who had jumped from the building. He put them in reverse order and you see this body in the air going up. The wish of a nine year old boy.

This book is exactly what its title says it is. Extremely and incredibly written. It's different, but I sure liked it.(less)

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Nov 29, 2011

K.D. rated it

Recommends it for: Emir

Recommended to K.D. by: Emir

Shelves: saddest, drama, family-drama, with-movie, given-away

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is extremely sad and incredibly stylish. For a thin plot, Foer was able to extend it by shifting narratives, delightful monologues, empty pages, pages with one liners, pages with black and white pictures, pages with colored pictures, pages with scribbled names, pages that look like a manuscript with editor's proofreading symbols and by several back stories (Hiroshima bombing, Dresden bombing, etc). That’s a delicate style that I think only gifted writers can p...moreExtremely Loud and Incredibly Close is extremely sad and incredibly stylish. For a thin plot, Foer was able to extend it by shifting narratives, delightful monologues, empty pages, pages with one liners, pages with black and white pictures, pages with colored pictures, pages with scribbled names, pages that look like a manuscript with editor's proofreading symbols and by several back stories (Hiroshima bombing, Dresden bombing, etc). That’s a delicate style that I think only gifted writers can pull away with. The story is simple: about a boy whose father died in 9/11 and a couple of years after, he found a mysterious key under a flower vase inside his father's dresser. The search led him to find out more stories about his father. The search led him to the answers to his questions, meet many interesting people, find a way to heal his wounds and move on with his life.

The narrator is Oskar Schell, a 9-y/o son of the 9/11 victim. Oskar is intellectually curious, sensitive, pacifist, musically-inclined, earnest. I am not sure if that is really how an American 9-y/o thinks, feels and acts. When I was at that age, I had a classmate who died of drowning while she and her family were having a picnic aboard a boat on a Black Saturday. I got sad because that classmate of mine was close to me but I did not have those deep and mind-blowing thoughts that Foer made for Oskar. I also thought that his thinking is sometimes vague, too mature and not childish at all. There were times I thought that he was like Oskar Matzerath, the man-child (or the man who decided not to grow up) in Gunter Grass’ opus, The Thin Drum minus of course the glass-shattering shrieks. Instead, the Oskar in this novel cries in every opportunity and says “I love you” as his second language like a big star in an afternoon television series. When he cries and says that he loves you, that’s heart shattering and you’ll say that Foer is a genius and this book should have a movie. Yes, there is an on-going production of this and you will see the output on December 25, 2011 at your favorite U.S. theaters :

Guaranteed to make you cry especially if you are a male and have a quirky relationship with your father or with your son. In my opinion, its melodrama borders between manipulative and sincere. In other words, it almost felt like it uses 9/11 to squirt tears from its readers and almost felt like it was just disrespectfully cashing out sympathy for the victims at the expense of the victims’ families and friends. However, I think that reading this in 2011 and not in 2005 when the book was first published is better because many of the families and friends of those who perished have already moved on with their lives. That despite the pain and much more the good memories that their loved ones left behind with them. Those will never ever go away.

Guaranteed to blow you away especially if you are used to reading linear narrative and straightforward and precise storytelling. I thought that the back stories were all pieces of thoughts that the boy or the father had so I just read them on strides. I did not know that those will be part of the grand scheme in the end. These little things could catch you unguarded and I thought that it was cleverly done: to turn a simple predictable a bit hallow story into an unbelievably and surprisingly memorable read. Unlike the funky style of Jennifer Egan in A Visit From a Goon Squad or the loaded style of Samantha Sotto’s Before Ever After, Foer’s alternating milieus and time periods are not confusing at all and they seem appropriate given the impact, sadness and confusion brought about by 9/11.

My favorite part is when the father said in the telephone: "Are you there? Are you there?" instead of saying "Is anyone there? Is anyone there?" For me this means that the father was hoping that his son was there because that would give him peace of mind. A father always think of his child's life or safety first before his own.

My first time to read a Foer and I am just blown away.
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Aug 15, 2008

Bart rated it

Recommends it for: No one at all

Recommended to Bart by: Everything is Illuminated

When Thomas Pynchon invented what James Wood later named “hyper realism”, he did literature no favors. To read Pynchon is to witness genius at its most joyless. A mind capable of inventing myriad things and compelled to record them all. But at least Pynchon showed genius.

What Jonathan Safran Foer shows, however, is mere gimmickry. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close takes readers who thought they might have seen a glimmer of greatness in Everything is Illuminated and convinces th...moreWhen Thomas Pynchon invented what James Wood later named “hyper realism”, he did literature no favors. To read Pynchon is to witness genius at its most joyless. A mind capable of inventing myriad things and compelled to record them all. But at least Pynchon showed genius.

What Jonathan Safran Foer shows, however, is mere gimmickry. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close takes readers who thought they might have seen a glimmer of greatness in Everything is Illuminated and convinces them all they really saw were special effects.

It’s very difficult to read Foer’s second novel without reflecting on his first. Everything is Illuminated began in such an original way that a reader forgave the 150 or so dull pages of less-than-compelling writing that came along throughout the rest of the book. The reader forgave the puerile reflections on the Holocaust and the manufactured confession of homosexuality. Because the book began so originally.

But Foer is a one-trick pony. In Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, he’s once more co-opted a mass tragedy and made a fruit salad of it with various voices and narrative tricks. Oh sure, the book has an underlying tone of sadness – sadness, not seriousness – because, clever as he wants to be, Foer didn’t dare go wholehog with a tragedy still as fresh as 9/11. But that’s about the only restriction he put on his vanity.

To indulge himself with a hundred irritating digressions and quips, Foer invented a child narrator. This has become more and more common among the hyper-realism set in the last 10 years. Raised by guidance counselors who told them to never stop being childish, these novelists give us hundreds of pages of “exploring their inner child” – all under the guise of serious artistic endeavor.

But this is not serious art. This is an author who makes the easy choice every time. When he thinks he has something profound to say, he doesn’t hesitate to have his nine-year-old narrator couch things in college-level language. The rest of the time, when he feels like writing about whichever page of the encyclopedia he happened to turn to that morning, he has the little professor wander off wherever he wishes, always with a literary safety net that says, “I’m trying to depict the world through a child’s eyes!”

But we should ask ourselves why a novelist feels compelled to depict a mass tragedy through a child’s eyes. After all, this isn’t biography; Foer could have depicted the tragedy through anyone’s eyes at all. Better put, when he sat down to write about the savagery of Napoleon’s 1812 battle with Russia, why didn’t Leo Tolstoy depict the burning of Moscow through the eyes of a nine-year-old and his nutty and mute grandfather? Probably because a nine-year-old would have limited Tolstoy’s vocabulary too drastically; a nine-year-old doesn’t know enough to say anything original about war.

Tolstoy, in other words, was too concerned about making an original commentary to worry about being a “fresh new voice!” in the contemporary fiction scene. Tolstoy took a large subject and made it larger. Foer takes a large subject and makes it tiny.

But sometimes, I’ve learned, large things must be tiny. That’s how Foer’s narrator would say it. And he’d be wrong, of course. But then, that’s why we don’t publish books written by nine-year-olds.(less)

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Mar 27, 2011

Joey rated it

Recommends it for: Everyone

Shelves: top-twenty-or-so-all-time

I don't think I read enough contemporary fiction to make sweeping, definitive statements about it. So I won't say that Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is the best book of the 21st century so far. But I will say that it's the best book I've read so far this century, and that Foer belongs in the rarified category of contemporary greats like Phillip Roth and Kurt Vonnegut.

This is not a perfect novel; it gets a little (but just a little) gimmicky in spots, and there are times when ...more

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Jul 19, 2007

Malbadeen rated it

Recommends it for: people that are willing to feel everything

Whatever with what happens to us when we die, this book reminds us of how connected we are right now and being connectioned to somone as brilliant as Foer is reason enough to be grateful!
I was completely baffaled at Foer's ability to know and convey so many things at once. His intimate view into grieving was what amazed me the most, his ability to carry you into the horrible realities without turning it into a sappy, poor kid type story was amazing.
So many things were familiar about ...more

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Jul 27, 2010

JSou rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, favo-u-rites, owned

Sometimes, I'm actually grateful for when good ol' insomnia kicks in. I can deep clean my kitchen without any distractions, play catch-up with the never-ending, nervous-breakdown-inducing amount of laundry I have, and even try to finally watch a movie (surprisingly, even snooze-worthy The Wolfman couldn't get me to sleep). And of course, I can read. Sure, I hate myself in the morning and feel like crap all day, but there's times that it's worth it. Especially when the book I'm reading is as ...more

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Jul 09, 2010

J rated it

Recommended to J by: Kim

Dear Kim,
Thank you for making me read this, you book-pushing, carney-loving, skee ball fiend. You were right. I wish you lighter boots*, always.

Dear Everyone Else,
Let’s get this out of the way first: There are pictures. They’re intended to be clever and, at times, to clutch at your heart. It’s gimmicky. I don’t care.

Granted, I read this at a time when I may have been more vulnerable to schmaltz. My mother had recently passed away. I was on a journey, searchi...more

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Jul 16, 2011

Laurel rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, favorites

I hate to keep pointing out to everyone that I listened to the audio version of this or that book, as it gets repetitive after awhile, and for the most part, it is usually irrelevant. In this case, though, it seems to have made a difference.

When I finished Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, I went online to read some reviews. I was surprised by what I read. It seemed that just about everyone who gave their opinion on this book, whether positive or negative, commented on Foer's "ex...more

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Aug 01, 2008

Andy rated it

Recommends it for: Pseudo-intellectuals, people suckered by saccharine emotion

A more apt title would have been Terribly Artificial and Unbearably Pretentious. This seems like the kind of thing I would have thought was a profound idea when I myself was nine, laboring on crayon illustrations to include with my manuscript into the wee hours of the morning. Maybe that means Foer succeeded. I happen to think it means his efforts were an abject failure, and that he has a great many readers and critics completely snowed.

With a book like this, you either accept ...more
A more apt title would have been Terribly Artificial and Unbearably Pretentious. This seems like the kind of thing I would have thought was a profound idea when I myself was nine, laboring on crayon illustrations to include with my manuscript into the wee hours of the morning. Maybe that means Foer succeeded. I happen to think it means his efforts were an abject failure, and that he has a great many readers and critics completely snowed.

With a book like this, you either accept it as charming wistfulness, or you don’t. You either think random tabbing on pages is innovative, or you don’t. You think empty pages and single phrases on other pages is a daring deconstruction of traditional publishing mores, or you don’t. I don’t.

Foer’s grieving young narrator is a ridiculous creation, the book’s pagination is something a stricter editor should have vomited upon, and the situations in which Oskar finds himself are fabricated of glitter-encrusted papier-mâché. This story is never once believable; therefore any emotion generated is as phony as a three-dollar bill. Now don’t misunderstand; I read lots of far-fetched books, so I believe genuine emotion can be achieved through stories about the tooth fairy, WMDs, sympathetic lawyers or any number of myths. But too many times in this book, people do things just to do them, and things happen just to have them happen or to give Foer scanty reason to wax poetic for pages at a time – without such bourgeoisie restrictions as paragraphs or punctuation (or sensible storytelling) muddling up the artiste’s vision.

Foer’s stream-of-consciousness narrative reminds me of the saying about the infinite monkeys: sooner or later one of an infinite number of monkeys on an infinite number of typewriters is going to randomly type the complete works of Shakespeare. Except in Foer’s case, it’s as though he was one of the monkeys in the middle of infinity, a bright but underachieving chimpanzee picking nits and banging the keys petulantly with a hardened piece of fecal matter. If Foer wished to write a thick book entirely in free verse (broken up with pictures now and again so people don’t become “bored”), then he should have had the cajones to do so, not foist this vanity project upon the public under the guise of a novel claiming to be about reaction to 9/11.

This is a book for a self-important Attention-Deficit society. I think most people in today’s age of texting while driving and non-stop news alerts and picture-in-picture don’t actually read every word on the page anyway. They scan pages looking for the “good stuff,” and that’s all they remember. So therefore they’re not put off by the author’s interminable ramblings, his attempt to bludgeon the reader with a thick blanket of nonsensical phrases, hoping they will be distracted into thinking they come together to create some sort of profound stew greater than the sum of its silly parts. But for those of us who think each word matters, this practice is annoying subterfuge, and ultimately meaningless.(less)

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Nov 17, 2008

Beth F. rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: 9-11-reference, 2008, general-fiction

I’m a pussy and won’t actually ride a rollercoaster (I hate amusement park rides) but reading this book was what I’d imagine riding a rollercoaster in the dark would be like. You never knew when it was going to go up, drop down, go upside down, stop on a dime, speed up, etc. etc. so every time you’d turn the page, it was an emotional surprise.

The main character and primary narrator of the book is a nine-year-old boy named Oskar who is precocious and I put that in italics because t...moreI’m a pussy and won’t actually ride a rollercoaster (I hate amusement park rides) but reading this book was what I’d imagine riding a rollercoaster in the dark would be like. You never knew when it was going to go up, drop down, go upside down, stop on a dime, speed up, etc. etc. so every time you’d turn the page, it was an emotional surprise.

The main character and primary narrator of the book is a nine-year-old boy named Oskar who is precocious and I put that in italics because that’s the description that everybody and their dog uses to describe Oskar. I tried to think of another way to describe him so I could be unique, but couldn’t. So I’m just like everybody else when I say that Oskar is precocious. Oskar is also…well, to be perfectly honest, he’s a little weird. He speaks French. He makes jewelry. He plays the tambourine. He's a vegan but makes an exception for dehydrated ice cream. He’s obsessed with Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History in Time (uh-huh, okay). He says shiitake and VJ instead of shit and vagina. And while he has the ability to befriend any adult he comes into contact with, he is teased at school and doesn’t get along with most of the other kids. Poor kid.

Oskar’s father was killed on 9/11/01 because he was in the World Trade Center for a business meeting that morning. Oskar and his father had a very special relationship and his father was the parent Oskar felt the closest too. His father recognized that Oskar was an unusually bright child and gave him clues for things that Oskar was supposed to solve. Oskar and his father had been involved in one such mystery when his father was killed and Oskar is upset that he’ll never discover what it was his father wanted him to know. And so missing his father and feeling panicky and insecure about the terrorist attacks becomes Oskar’s guiding mission in life. Almost everything he says and/or does can be tied back to that morning and what happened.

Toward the beginning of the novel, Oskar discovers a mysterious key with his father’s belongings. His father had written the word “Black” in red pen on the envelope and since it doesn’t belong to any of the locks in the apartment he shares with his mother, Oskar realizes the key was to be the final mystery his father left for him to solve. And so he sets out to solve this mystery and meets many people on his self-imposed journey.

Beyond that, the book is a bit difficult to explain. It doesn’t move in a linear fashion and jumps back and forth between Oskar’s attempt to solve the mystery of the Black key, his grandparents memories of the bombing attacks of Dresden, Germany when they were young people, their courtship, the PTSD his grandfather suffered after the attacks and his eventual abandonment of his family as a result of his emotional problems. If you draw comparisons between Oskar and his grandfather, you can’t help but wonder “what next?” for Oskar.

I enjoyed this book. It made me cry. I laughed. I didn’t want to put it down. But parts of it didn’t exactly live up to the expectations that were set forth in the beginning. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but if I do, I’ll come back and update. In the meantime, I’ll give it 3.75 stars officially but round it up to four. (less)

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Sep 06, 2010

Brad rated it

Shelves: unfinished, paused

I read the first chapter and stopped. I am pissed off. I have rarely felt so manipulated as a reader in my life, and I think the manipulation is more about the way it is written than what it is written about, although that is, in itself, fairly manipulative. If this is how Foer usually writes, I want no part of him or his work. Still, if this was a short story and I reached the point where the Dad is about to talk to his son before the towers collapse, I would be excited by the cleverness of the...more

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Dec 20, 2008

ScottK rated it

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. The 5 star system here on goodreads, means that you thought the Book was amazing. That being the case I logically could have rated it a 10. There is soooo much that is amazing about this book. I only finished last night, this morning while shaving I thought of even another amazing thing.

There are some that complain , "I couldn't get into the writing style", or "I hate the way he did the conversation parts, they were confusing". Well, IMHO, those are just lame ass ...moreThe 5 star system here on goodreads, means that you thought the Book was amazing. That being the case I logically could have rated it a 10. There is soooo much that is amazing about this book. I only finished last night, this morning while shaving I thought of even another amazing thing.

There are some that complain , "I couldn't get into the writing style", or "I hate the way he did the conversation parts, they were confusing". Well, IMHO, those are just lame ass reasons for not liking this book. I know that I should not cast judgement, and I really am not. I feel bad for them because, again IMHO they are missing one of the greatest books that I have read in 2008. Sure there may be people with black and shriveled hearts that don't "get" this book. I feel badly for them as well.

How an author can take so much pain,hurt,despair and regret,and make it such an enjoyable read DESPITE these things is laudable. If you don't feel something for one of the characters, perhaps you should make a Dr's Appt. maybe you are dead, or a zombie. Oskar Schell will live in my memory as one of my Favorite Characters of all time. Undaunted, by the enormity of his task he with much thought ( but not much caring about what needed to be done) simply did it. Talk with everyone in NYC with the last name of Black?? Most of us would have quit right there,claiming it's impossibility.

I will admit I did not care for Oskar's Mom very much in the beginning,actually not until about the middle of the book when Oskar and his Mom have an arguement and He tells her if he could have chosen who died,he would have chosen her. I began to feel her pain more at that point.

Then near the end when we find out that his Mom had been helping as much as she could, I began to Love her. She knew, she understood, that the search for the lock his key opened was something he had to do on his own. She did not get in his way, or try to hinder him in any way. In fact she acted as if she knew nothing about it, all the time, doing what she could to make his journey an easier one.

It made me think alot about how much parents (I think Mothers moreso)do really go out of their way to guide, Nurture and protect the things they hold most dear. But the thing is MOST of what they do will go unnoticed,it will fly under the radar. The most wonderful thing about that is they (the parents/Mothers) know what they did or are doing will not be acknowledged,they do it anyway.

In the end No one really got what they wanted, except maybe a little more understanding of Love and the way it works. Dad did not miraculously miss the attack. Mom did not find a new love,in fact said she would never fall in love again. Oskar did find the Lock but it was in no way what he wanted or needed it to be, or perhaps it was exactly what he needed it to be. Grandma and Grandpa,did Love each other deeply but neither could escape the Ghosts from their past and therefore could not be together. The last letter we read from his Grandma, in which she finally realized it was important to tell the ones you love that you do indeed love them was a 3 tissue passage for me. Some people never get it,others get it but it comes to them too late. I would like to thank those who recommended this book to me, it was amazing. I know it will stay with me for a long time to come. (less)

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Jan 13, 2012

Gayle rated it

I just want to start off by saying, I am well aware of Foer criticism - saying he's trying too hard, or that his stories flow as a way of structural emulation, and not origination....Or whatever the hell people say, who are trying to prove their own arrogance.... i know, and I don't care.

I love JSF! I loved Everything is Illuminated! I put off reading this book, there was not a doubt in my mind that it would be incomparably bland compared to EII. Well it was incomparable alright; but f...more

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Aug 20, 2007

Anna rated it

· review of another edition

just finished Jonathan Safran Foer's novel last night, late, because I couldn't sleep and I only had a little bit left to read. At it's end, I wept. It is not a sentimental book. It's written in experimental style, with doodles and photos and random placement of words, phrases, dialogue running into each other sometimes, weird indentations, and POVs that once in a while jump around, even tho' sticking with the "I" voice. There were times I thought, "Hey! This seems like a writing...more just finished Jonathan Safran Foer's novel last night, late, because I couldn't sleep and I only had a little bit left to read. At it's end, I wept. It is not a sentimental book. It's written in experimental style, with doodles and photos and random placement of words, phrases, dialogue running into each other sometimes, weird indentations, and POVs that once in a while jump around, even tho' sticking with the "I" voice. There were times I thought, "Hey! This seems like a writing exercise he just threw in there! An excellent one, but nonetheless, seemingly distracting."

Yet it all comes together in the end. Not comes around -- no, it's not circular in that neat, narrative way most fiction perhaps tries to attain. It's random and all over and often exasperating to follow. But it FEELS like experience and in the end, it FEELS like you lived it, because the final words encompass you in a most comprehensive, compassionate, resonant, moving way.

This won't make sense -- I am still processing -- and I don't really want to write a literary lauding of Foer and his wonderful character, 13-year-old Oskar (or is he 15? I lost track, but not in a bad way). He's already one of the prestigious GRANTA's "Best Young Novelists Under 35 to Watch." Others will analyze and wax literary much better than I.

Simply, when this novel was published in 2005, I read the reviews that said, "Here is a young man who has written one of the first novels of 9/11, through the quirky eyes of a pre-teen, without sentimentality or melodrama or gore, and better yet, with the talent of one who is prodigiously gifted." Or some such phrasing. In any case, I remember making a note of it. "This will be the first novel about 9/11 I will read, when I am ready."

Last September 2006, during the 5th anniversary of 9/11, I found myself actually wanting to remember, for the first time. Not that I ever forgot -- I feel that date quite viscerally every year it rolls around and in every mention and reference I hear. I think, like any New Yorker at that moment, I cannot detach myself from its burrowed presence within me, having lived through that day on Manhattan and that year afterwards during its immediate aftermath. But I put it away from me, That Thing I Never Wanted to Wallow In. So this year, I finally let myself wallow. And I read this book.

All I can say is that it captures in a very deep psychic sense, all of the details from after around beyond that day and its aftermath, in the most thorough, random, distracted, ever-present, whimsical, sad, horrible, angry, funny, wayward, yet connective ways, so organically, that even though I sometimes wandered in the reading, sometimes tuned out only to get thrust back in, found myself surprisingly moved in unwary places, thoughtful in so many unsuspected spaces, I still was touched to my core by its final simplicity at the end. I cannot share those details here -- I feel like this is one of those books that a first time read is one's own singular experience and thus, would like to leave that future discovery for potential readers intact -- but I will say this: It's a beautiful beautiful book about and beyond 9/11, especially in regards to the notion of imagination allowing humanity always, a semblance of hope, in every shading. DEFINITELY recommended, tho' it's experimental fiction style may not be everyone's cup of tea.(less)

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Jan 02, 2012

Jennifer (aka EM) rated it

Shelves: lonely-hearts-club, read-only-coz-of-gr, for-the-desert-island, unhealthy4children

Profoundly moving, beautifully written with deep compassion and empathy for human grief, for the tragic moments that define our lives and characters. Nine-year-old Oskar Schell will stay with me, I think, for a very long time.

I finished late last night (early this morning) and immediately got out of bed to look up a feature written by Ian Brown, published in The Globe & Mail on September 15th, 2001. I've remembered it to this day, because Brown wrote so eloquently about the questio...more

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Nov 21, 2007

Jacob rated it

Recommends it for: human beings only.

Jonathan Safran Foer is one of the most creative storytellers I have ever read. He doesn't just tell you the story - he uses the medium itself as a symbol, weaving his stories as immersive meta-narratives in which you are both an observer and a participant, and in so doing, he achieves emotional connections to an otherwise unreachable depth and provides insights that, in the context of the narrative, feel more like self-evident truths. This was true of Everything Is Illuminated, and it's true ...moreJonathan Safran Foer is one of the most creative storytellers I have ever read. He doesn't just tell you the story - he uses the medium itself as a symbol, weaving his stories as immersive meta-narratives in which you are both an observer and a participant, and in so doing, he achieves emotional connections to an otherwise unreachable depth and provides insights that, in the context of the narrative, feel more like self-evident truths. This was true of Everything Is Illuminated, and it's true of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. I have heard this book criticized as self-indulgent. That is a rather subjective criticism to begin with, but I found it to be nothing of the kind. Were a work to appear so, I would imagine that I would be seeing constantly confronted with the author's intentions, which would manipulate the story - and maybe other readers fancied that they did - but I left this book feeling like I had lived the life of the protagonist (a boy named Oscar) and witnessed his family's history. If any single concept could synopsize this book, it would be catharsis. From beginning to end you feel that the boy is looking for release from something that has taken hold of him in the face of tremendous loss. As he searches, he encounters instance after instance of the loss, pain, and endurance of others, always trying to alleviate it, always seeing right through situations to the people behind them in the way only a child his age could. He is simultaneously a fiercely autonomous individual and an utter product of his family - totally free to do whatever he likes (and to feel as lost as can be), yet all the while watched over, protected, and even determined by his loved ones. The parallels one can draw to one's own life (whether to lack or to fulfillment of these ideas) are powerful. In the context of the tragedy of September 11th, we see an utterly humanized account of a suffering world.

I have hardly scratched the surface here of all the themes, moments, and unwritable realizations (many of which came from creatively placed pictures) that I saw in this book.(less)

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Feb 11, 2008

Alex added it

Shelves: currently-reading-might-finish

Perhaps I'm just stupid, but I don't get this book, nor am I really crazy about it.

It's a little too hip for me, in the sense that I don't think anybody really gets what the hell Foer is trying to say, but because it's obscure everyone likes it.

Or maybe I'm just looking too much into the book. But I found myself having to read and re-read pages over and over again to make sense of it all.

It doesn't do it for me, but I might try to get through it one last time...more

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Jun 09, 2010

Δx Δp ≥ ½ ħ htgkvkkviholmvobsvzighxofyyzmw rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: a-day-in-the-life, i-am-the-walrus, glass-onion

Bukan pertama kali ini saia dipanggil "aneh" oleh teman-teman saia. Bahkan sejak SD pun, rekan-rekan saia pernah mengatakan bahwa saia itu "alien dari planet Pikari", merujuk pada nama planet asal Ultraman Zearth yg kadung populer pada saat itu (setelah Ultraman Dyna dan Ultraman Tiga).

Tatapan aneh yg bisa diterjemahkan sbg where are you planet from? itu rasa-rasanya dimulai saat kelas 3 SD. saat itu seperti biasa, kalau sesudah liburan caturwulan (sistem semester...more

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Nov 08, 2008

Matt Holloway rated it

Extremely Precocious and Incredibly Irritating

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Jan 31, 2012

Mike rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: Anyone

Recommended to Mike by: A suggestion for group read by goodreads group Literary Exploration

Shelves: 9-11-2001, fathers-and-sons, loss, love, death, childhood, childhood-vicarious-trauma, psychology, grief, world-trade-twin-towers, childhood-depression, mothers-and-sons, grandmothers-and-grandsons, grandfathers-and-grandsons, marriage, sisters, isolation

Extremely Loud and Incredbily Close: Jonathan Foer's novel of love, loss, and memory

There are events that leave an indelible stamp on us for a great portion of our lives. This happens from generation to generation.

Ask those living at the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor where they were and what they were doing, they will be able to tell you the answer. Similarly, ask me where I was when I heard John F. Kennedy was shot, I can tell you.

Ask what I was doing ...more

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Apr 24, 2010

indri rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: Qui, Bubub

Recommended to indri by: Mhd Haikal

Shelves: urbana, sastra-dunia

#2010-36#

UNIQUE. UNIK. PROPRE

Bagaimana jika kau membaca sebuah buku dan alih-alih kau membaca kisah si tokohnya, namun kau terperosok dalam apa yang dirasakan oleh si tokoh. Ia memberimu kata-kata, gambar, bukan merupakan ilustrasi ceritanya, namun apa yang dilihat si tokoh, akan kita lihat juga, dengan perasaan yang kurang lebih sama dengan si tokoh. Novel ini mengombang-ambingkan perasaan bingung dan kacau si tokoh, menjadi kebingungan kita juga, dan membuat kita ...more

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Feb 06, 2009

Lavinia rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: 2009, fiction, in-en

* I liked Oskar, his googolplex questions and inventions, his feelings which are always extreme; he either gets heavy boots or feels like 100 dollars.

* The part that moved me most was the record Oskar played at school, the interview with the Hiroshima survivor, talking about his daughter.

* Despite the sad subject, the book is quite amusing and I really liked that.

* Oskar makes incredibly cool friends and acquaintances.

* I cannot exactly relate to 9...more

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Aug 10, 2007

Teresa Jusino rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: readandreviewed

I promised myself that I wouldn't compare Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (EL&IC) with its predecessor, Everything is Illuminated, because they are two completely different books and should each stand on their own. However, as they are both works by an author I admire I will say this: EII was great. EL&IC was good.

EL&IC tells the story of Oskar Schell, a 9-year-old boy in Manhattan whose father died in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. He finds a key in an envelope ma...moreI promised myself that I wouldn't compare Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (EL&IC) with its predecessor, Everything is Illuminated, because they are two completely different books and should each stand on their own. However, as they are both works by an author I admire I will say this: EII was great. EL&IC was good.

EL&IC tells the story of Oskar Schell, a 9-year-old boy in Manhattan whose father died in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. He finds a key in an envelope marked "Black" amid his father's things and starts out on a quest around NYC to find out what the key means and gain some insight into how his father died. The other story intertwined with this one is the story of Oscar's grandparents: his grandfather, who lost his ability to speak along with the woman he loved; and his grandmother, from whom we hear in letters she writes to him.

Much has been made of Oskar's being too precocious and "cute" in other reviews. I think the creation of Oskar Schell is the best thing in the book. I think that all of his eccentricities (many unexplained) make him a vivid, interesting character. He was the kind of character I wanted to reach in and hug - especially when he "gave himself bruises" or wore "heavy boots."

I also appreciate the way that JSF writes his older characters. Thomas and Oskar's grandmother are riveting in the way the express themselves and tell their stories - JSF treats them with such dignity and care, and I was completely invested in both of them.

JSF has a gift for getting to the emotional heart of things in a way that few writers do. In this novel, as in his first and in his short fiction, he describes feelings in a way that I never could, but in a way that I recognize immediately.

Now, this is not to say that the book doesn't have its flaws...there are certain lines that are too much - something about zipping up the sleeping bag of myself comes to mind. And while I respect the impulse to try to make this novel more than just words on a page by adding images to be flipped through, there were some that were just pointless - even taken in the context of being in Oskar's book of Stuff That's Happened to Me. For example, the page that depicts the ink samples at the paint store works, because I found Thomas' name among the others and it piqued my interest. However, the photo of the elephant crying just seems to be an illustration and doesn't seem to serve a real purpose in being there...

However, my biggest problem with the book is the fact that I think JSF has chosen to deal directly with September 11th too soon. This is not to say that it is "too sacred" to write about, or that it shouldn't be dealt with, or that JSF shouldn't have been the first to write about it. I think if any author would be capable of dealing with that tragedy in a novel, he would. My problem is that I know that he had written a completely different novel before this....about lives converging in a museum, about a homosexual relationship that goes unacknowledged in history.... Also, I remember hearing the character, Oskar, for the first time at a reading JSF did at Russian Samovar in December of 2002 - he read the original first chapter of what now exists as EL&IC. 9/11 wasn't mentioned at all. I don't know what JSF's process was, or when what was to be "The Zelnick Museum" ended up turning into EL&IC, but it just feels like 9/11 was stuck in as an afterthought, and so it doesn't feel quite true. What holds this book together for me is Oskar's sense of loss. How he is dealing with the loss of a parent. But in this book, the fact that his father died in 9/11 seems inconsequential. His father could have died any number of ways, and it wouldn't affect the book at all - Oskar would probably still deal with the same fears and insecurities had anything else killed his father. So why tell this story? Why try to write a 9/11 novel that isn't really a 9/11 novel?(less)

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May 28, 2007

Jeffrey rated it

Recommends it for: Those Interested In A Quick Read

There is something to be said for knowing one's limitations, a lesson that was clearly lost on Jonathan Safran Foer. Foer attempts to be part J.D. Salinger (alienated quest), part William Faulkner (conflict with environment), and part E.L. Doctorow (hybridized novel), but does not have the literary chops to do the job on any count.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is the story of a young boy named Oskar whose father is killed in the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 1...moreThere is something to be said for knowing one's limitations, a lesson that was clearly lost on Jonathan Safran Foer. Foer attempts to be part J.D. Salinger (alienated quest), part William Faulkner (conflict with environment), and part E.L. Doctorow (hybridized novel), but does not have the literary chops to do the job on any count.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is the story of a young boy named Oskar whose father is killed in the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. His mother, disconnected and detatched, finds another man, but Oskar and his grandparents, who live across the street, are having a more difficult time coping with the death of their father and son, respectively. Oskar's grandparents are additionally haunted by their personal tragedy because the September 11th attacks remind them of the firebombing of Dresden during World War II. Foer attempts, however unsuccessfully, to parallel these two narratives and the separated generations that experienced them.

Oskar is a unique child--he speaks many languages, makes friends with everyone he speaks with, and fashions jewelery. If one was unaware of Oskar's many talents, he would be happy to give them a business card. After finding a key left behind by his father, Oskar seeks to find what that key opens. This quest takes him around New York, a la Salinger's Holden, in a quest for self. These quests provide the reader with some emotional and enlightening experiences and scenes, but the poorly-executed allegory makes the journey mostly trite and overly moralistic. Neither Oskar nor Foer have the style to be Holden or Salinger, respectively. The unique style of The Catcher in the Rye provides it with its uniquely classic status; the pedestrian style of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close provides it with its average stature.

Oskar's quest is caused by an inability to come to terms with his new environment. This is a feeling that both plagued and inspired Joyce and Faulkner. Joyce himself and Faulkner's characters, however, are much more experienced than Oskar and have had the opportunity to let their conflicts play out and become more nuanced than Oskar. Oskar is only nine-years old; the book happens too quickly and so does Oskar. The book would have perhaps been more effective if it were an insight into Oskar's teenage years, after the death of his father had simmered and fostered more backlash, especially at his mother. Then, and only then, could one see Oskar as Joyce, Faulkner, or even Holden.

The way the story is woven together--hybridized (blank pages, different fonts, etc.) and with intertextuality--is not only too complex for a nine-year old boy, it is too complex for Foer who does not have the Morrison-esque or (her idol) Faulkner-esque chops to successfully hybridize the page. Foer's novel almost seems non-linear and hybridized for the sake of non-linearity and hybridization. The two plots--September 11th and Dresden--are never fully reconciled and the parallel is a bit askew. The nuances of both are lost on Foer. The discussions between Oskar and his grandparents lead to some genuinely hearfelt moments, but by-and-large the failure to adequately link these two historical instances falls short. E.L. Doctorow, one of the most skiled American writers, attempted to hybridize the page in Loon Lake, which, like Foer's effort, was noble but failed. If Doctorow can't do it, Foer can't either.

I don't mean to come down hard on Foer because it takes a lot of courage to attempt to embrace and emulate these literary giants, but the novel can be considered a study in needing to let-Foer-be-Foer. He produces some very substantial, genuinely emotional moments, but they are few and far between and the hype of this novel as an anthem for the 9/11 generation quickly dissolves after only a few failed pages.(less)

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Jan 16, 2012

Chaybyrd rated it

Shelves: kindle-read, read-in-2012

I have a love-hate relationship with Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Some sections I thought were beautiful and moving, some sections I felt dragged the story and were outright boring, and a lot of the sections were extremely bathetic and incredibly heavy handed.

The story focuses on Oskar Schell, an eight year old upper middle class boy trying desperately to grapple with the tragic death of his father on 9/11. As the plot unfolds, we become silent partners on Oskar's journey an...more

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