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Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

Jonathan Safran Foer (Goodreads Author)

3.97 · Rating details · 402,461 ratings · 24,273 reviews

Nine-year-old Oskar Schell is an inventor, amateur entomologist, Francophile, letter writer, pacifist, natural historian, percussionist, romantic, Great Explorer, jeweller, detective, vegan, and collector of butterflies. When his father is killed in the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Centre, Oskar sets out to solve the mystery of a key he discovers in his father ...more

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Paperback, 326 pages

Published April 4th 2006 by Mariner Books (first published April 4th 2005)

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Feb 20, 2008 Kim rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: everyone

Recommended to Kim by: Montambo

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

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 1994, my then boyfriend and I li ...more

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Oct 17, 2009 brian rated it really liked it

xxxxxxx

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Mar 09, 2009 Ben rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2010, audio

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 value opportunity and freedom too much for that. I listened to it. People tell me if I had ...more

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Aug 05, 2008 Bart rated it did not like 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 them all they real 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 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. ...more

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Aug 15, 2015 Paul Bryant rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: novels

I’m Oskar with a k like Liza with a Z cause Oskar with a k is krazy (also kind, klever and kultured). I’m 10 going on Dalai Lama. I make jewellery (I know!) and collect butterflies who have died naturally and play a tambourine constantly. You have to wonder why no one has killed me since I must drive people insane with my maximum cuteness. Oh, and have shortwave radio conversations with my grandma over in another desirable residence in the Upper West Side. I have empathy for every living thing i I’m Oskar with a k like Liza with a Z cause Oskar with a k is krazy (also kind, klever and kultured). I’m 10 going on Dalai Lama. I make jewellery (I know!) and collect butterflies who have died naturally and play a tambourine constantly. You have to wonder why no one has killed me since I must drive people insane with my maximum cuteness. Oh, and have shortwave radio conversations with my grandma over in another desirable residence in the Upper West Side. I have empathy for every living thing including you. This great and terrible tragedy happened to me so nobody, not even those horrid GR people, can make fun of me, even when I’m so twee a hobbit would thwow up all over the nearest elf. This is the way I speak with my Mom :

“Mom?” “Yes?” “Nothing.”
“What is it, baby?” “Well it’s just that wouldn’t it be great if mattresses had spaces for your arm, so that when you rolled on to your side, you could fit just right?” “That would be nice.” “And good for your back, probably, because it would let your spine be straight, which I know is important.” “That is important.” “Also, it would make snuggling easier… And making snuggling easier is important.” “Very.”

Here, you can use this bin, or the sink, whichever. I’m so kloying and keen to make everyone’s lives better by befriending deaf centenarians and lonely billionaires and dragging them off on eccentric heart-twanging dead-father-related quests that Amelie from that kooky French movie Amelie would be out-cloyed and out-eccentriced at every turn & would have to throw herself out of my window wearing a birdseed dress which is an invention of mine for suicides by defenestration as the birdseed would attract birds who would carry the person aloft & thus prevent their self-destruction. Okay maybe when the birdseed was gone then the person would plummet, but I don’t think that far about any of my kooky schemes, magical children who could never possibly exist don’t do that.

My brain is just naturally like Pixar HD.

I’ll invent an invisibility suit that has a camera on my back that takes video of everything behind me and plays it onto a plasma screen that I’ll wear on my front, which will cover everything but my face. It’ll look like I’m not there at all.

You may be wondering how I got to be like I am. Well, there’s a long line of cutesypie narrators in my family. My grandfather, frinstance. He’s tweer than me. Is that a word? It is now. He explained How I Met Your Grandmother like this:

I had so much to ask her, “Do you lie on your stomach and look for things under the ice? Do you like plays? Do you like it when you can hear something before you can see it?... in the middle of my youth, in the middle of Europe, in between our two villages, on the verge of losing everything, I bumped into something and was knocked to the ground… at first I thought I’d walked into a tree, but then the tree became a person…

I would like to explain that I am depressed about my father but as I’m in this novel I don’t call it that, I say I’m wearing heavy boots. I would also like to say that what with all this smiling through tears, the grandma, the grandfather, the old guy who can hear again, the mom who is probably schmoozing with some guy in the next room, the sad quest to find the Blacks of New York, AND 9/11 AND let's throw Hitler into the mix, you don’t have to look any further for a dictionary definition of emotional blackmail.
...more

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Aug 01, 2008 Andy rated it did not like 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 it as charming wis
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. ...more

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Jun 04, 2019 emma rated it it was amazing

Shelves: owned, school, recommend, beautifully-written, literary-fiction, 5-stars, non-ya, reread, reviewed

WARNING: EARNEST REVIEW AHEAD. Very genuine and emotional and generally gross.

I love Jonathan Safran Foer. I love him even though chances seem high that he is quite pretentious (have you read that New York Times piece made up of email correspondence between Natalie Portman and himself? Perma-cringe). I love him even though I’ve only read two of his books and may never read more than that. I love him even though absolutely the only thing I care to know about him is his writing.

When someone writes ...more

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Jun 30, 2007 Amanda rated it it was amazing

Shelves: all_time_favs

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 bad; if I was 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 bad; if I was working, I wouldn't want to hear someone who was getting paid to read laughing. In my defense, at least everyone could see that writing matters to me and I appreciate quality literature, which further proves my already-established qualifications as a tutor.

But then I got to the climax of the book, and I was moved by how the climax was written because it felt so "real" to me, because it captured how I feel and think (if those things could be replicated in language other than poetry), and I loved the characters as I love my families, and I loved the twist in the plot and how it came together in a way I didn't think it would come together because I was being skeptical and I thought it would be more trite, so I'm reading in the middle of this common room but I wouldn't call it reading as much as I would call it immersing myself into the novel when I start crying. Once the tears got in the way of my reading, I looked away from the page to wipe them, and realized I wasn't at home. I was in the Student-Athletics Department. I was tutoring. I had to pull my shit together.

What I love is that a book could do that to me. That it could inspire me--to write, to live, to not be afraid, to not be embarrassed when I bawl at work. I love this book so much I'm going to buy a copy of it. I would marry it if I wasn't married to FD. I want to put Kiedrowski's frosting on it and eat it.

I love the multi-genre-ness of it. It's brave and out-there and absolutely gorgeous.

I still have one chapter left. Once I started crying, I thought maybe I should wait until I was home to finish it--just in case I need to sob for a couple of minutes or hours.

It's moments like these that make me happy to be a reader, and even more so a writer...

~

It's almost 9 p.m., and I finished the book. I didn't cry. I didn't sob. I just finished it while BBQ-ing tonight's dinner (Chicken, roasted potatoes, and broccoli), ate dinner while watching the newest Deadliest Catch, cleaned-up, and talked to Pops. What's funny is, though, all the while I was doing this business, I was thinking about this book. And I have a feeling I'm going to think about this book for a long while. Like when I see a great film that moves me, it sticks with me, such as Dancer in the Dark.

And when I read something so good, like Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, I believe in God more than any other time in my life. Because without God how could such a great book come into existence? Or such a great author who is able to write such a great book? And then such a great mind? And the food such a great mind eats? And the air such a great mind breathes? (You probably can see where this is going.)

I can't review this book like other books. Mostly because I'm too emotional right now. But I can say if you read this blog, you should this book, if you haven't already.

And before I give my HK rating, a fellow McGuire/Facebook buddy said about Foer's book, "it's seriously chronic. i already bought Everything is Illuminated." Chronic, people! Dr. Dre and Snoop would be up on this shit! C'mon!

For the first time ever and maybe only time ever...5 Hello Kittys. ...more

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Feb 09, 2020 Baba rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: contemporary

One of the most wonderful and thought provoking legacy of 9-11 books that I've read. The book starts not long after 9-11, when/where the father of the 9 year old narrator Oskar was killed. Events come to pass in which he finds a key, a key that sets him off on an investigation all over New York, with the aid of several other individuals that cross his path, seeking answers about himself and his 9-11 trauma.

There is also another story being told at the same time, using letters from Oskar's grandf ...more

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Feb 03, 2019 BlackOxford rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: american

An Abuse of Childhood

Traumatic tragedy makes good newspaper copy, especially when it involves children. The combination of horror and sentiment seems irresistible. But does it really serve for good fiction? I have my doubts, at least in the case of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. I can’t be entirely certain because, as with so much in my advanced age, the book drags up so many childhood memories from my own sub-conscious that I’m wary of my own judgment.

My psychological connection with Foer ...more

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Jan 19, 2012 Lawyer rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Anyone

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

Shelves: death, childhood, marriage, 2012, loss, isolation, mothers-and-sons, love, fathers-and-sons, psychology

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 when the attacks of 9/11 occurred, I c ...more

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Sep 04, 2010 Brad rated it it was ok

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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Feb 11, 2012 Christina White rated it did not like it

Shelves: literary-fiction

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This was horrible. The writing was horrible. The book jumped around and around and was so hard to follow. It was like reading something written by someone who was half squirrel and half crack head. Instead of creating colorful and deep characters using words, he used punctuation. The grandfather spoke using an abundance of useless commas, the grandmother used lots of periods and Mr. Black spoke in sentences using only exclamation points. I was thankful no spoke by asking only questions. If I wou ...more

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Dec 23, 2017 Fabian rated it it was amazing

On top of the already devastating wreckage left from the September eleventh attacks, Foer describes a bittersweet form of intergenerational pain. (It eventually became an unpopular albeit Oscar-nominated film [which days later I watched & was disappointed with]) this is a huge deviation from his true masterwork (for I suppose that one is more universally great and, unlike this one, less personally divisive:) Everything Is Illuminated. It is so radically different and almost as complex and perfec ...more

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Apr 19, 2010 Becky rated it did not like it

Shelves: disappointing, 2013, reviewed

I finished this book this morning, determined to complete it before I did anything else today. I wanted it to just be over. I read the last 41 pages & then looked at the additional 15 unnumbered pages of pictures at the end, and now I sit here rather annoyed. I don't know how to communicate my disappointed sighs via text.

I really wanted to love this book. It was given to me by a friend who loved it - someone whose opinion I trust. I didn't get around to reading it for a long time though, and no ...more

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Sep 10, 2019 Ahmad Sharabiani rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, 21th-century, historical

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is a 2005 novel by Jonathan Safran Foer. The book's narrator is a nine-year-old boy named Oskar Schell. In the story, Oskar discovers a key in a vase that belonged to his father, a year after he is killed in the September 11 attacks.

The discovery inspires Oskar to search all around New York for information about the key and closure following his father's death.

تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز یازدهم ماه ژانویه سال Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is a 2005 novel by Jonathan Safran Foer. The book's narrator is a nine-year-old boy named Oskar Schell. In the story, Oskar discovers a key in a vase that belonged to his father, a year after he is killed in the September 11 attacks.

The discovery inspires Oskar to search all around New York for information about the key and closure following his father's death.

تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز یازدهم ماه ژانویه سال 2019 میلادی

عنوان: بی‌نهایت بلند و به‌غایت نزدیک؛ نویسنده: جاناتان سافران‌ فوئر؛ مترجم: لیلا نصیری‌ها؛ ویراستار احسان نوروزی؛ تهران نشر چشمه‏‫٬ 1397؛ در 415ص؛ شابک 9786002298553؛ چاپ دوم 1397؛ موضوع: داستانهای نویسندگان امریکایی - سده 21م‬

داستان «بی‌نهایت بلند و به‌ غایت نزدیک» درباره ی پسربچه ی نه ساله‌ ای به نام «اسکار شل» است، که پدرش را در حملات «یازدهم سپتامبر» از دست می‌دهد؛ رمان درباره ی جستجوهای این پسربچه، برای پیدا کردن قفلی است، که پدر کلید اسرارآمیزش را، برایش به جا گذاشته است؛ نویسنده برای نگارش رمان، از تکنیک‌های «پست مدرن» از جمله «راوی‌های گوناگون»، و «تایپوگرافی»، استفاده کرده است؛ پس از انتشار رمان، فیلمی سینمایی با اقتباس از رمان ساخته شد، که کارگردان و بازیگرش به ترتیب، «استیون دالدری» و «تام» هنکس بودند

چند سال پس از درگذشت پدرش، در یورش «یازدهم سپتامبر»، «اسکار شِل» کلیدی را در گلدانی پیدا می‌کند؛ کلید به پدرش تعلق دارد، «اسکار» از این بابت مطمئن است؛ اما این کلید کدام یک از یکصدوشصت و دو میلیون قفل شهر نیویورک را باز می‌کند؟ این پرسش، «اسکارِ» کاشف، نامه‌ نگار، و کارآگاه آماتور را، بر آن وامی‌دارد، تا هر پنج محله‌ ی نیویورک را، زیر پا بگذارد، و وارد زندگی دوستان، اقوام و آدم‌هایی کاملاً غریبه شود؛ در این راه، غم‌ و غصه‌ های بسیاری، روی شانه‌ های «اسکار» سنگینی می‌کند، تحت ‏تأثیر این غم‌ و‌ غصه ‌ها، حتی جراحت‌هایی به خودش وارد می‌کند، و با هر کشفی، یک گام به دل ماجرای پُر رمز‌ و‌ رازی نزدیک می‌شود، که به پنجاه سال پیش، و تاریخچه‌ ی خانوادگی‌شان بازمی‌گردد؛ اما آیا این سفر او را از پدر درگذشته‌ اش دورتر، یا او را به پدرش نزدیک‌تر می‌کند؟

نقل نمونه متن: (پس صندلی چرخ‌دار را آوردم دم پله‌ ها، و با هم داد زدند که یک جورهایی عجیب بود، چون صداهاشان می‌آمد بالا و می‌رفت پایین، اما صورت همدیگر را نمی‌توانستند ببینند؛ با هم زدند زیر خنده و صدای خنده‌ شان کل راه‌ پله را پر کرد؛ بعد آقای بلک داد زد، اسکار! و من داد زدم، این که اسم من است، چرا داد می‌زنی؛ و او داد زد، بیا پایین! وقتی برگشتم لابی، آقای بلک توضیح داد شخصی که دنبالش بودیم پیشخدمت «ویندوز آن د ورلد» بوده؛ یعنی که چه؟ فلیز، زنی که باهاش حرف زده بودم، خودش شخصا او را نمی‌شناخت؛ وقتی اثاث‌ کشی کرده بود این‌جا، در موردش شنیده بود؛ - واقعا؟ - از خودم که در نیاوردم؛ رفتیم توی خیابان و شروع کردیم به راه رفتن؛ ماشینی گذشت که صدای آهنگش واقعا بلند بود، و قلبم را به لرزه درآورد؛ بالا را نگاه کردم، و بند رخت‌هایی را دیدم، که پنجره‌ های زیادی را با لباس‌هایی که روی‌شان آویزان بود، به‌هم وصل کرده بودند؛ از آقای بلک پرسیدم «وقتی آدم‌ها می‌گویند بند رخت، منظورشان این است.»؛ - گفت «منظورشان همین است.» - گفتم: «من هم همین فکر را می‌کردم.»؛ - باز هم کمی پیاده رفتیم؛ بچه‌ ها توی خیابان‌ها داشتند سنگ‌ها را با پا پرت می‌کردند، و خوشحال می‌خندیدند؛ آقای بلک یکی از سنگ‌ها را برداشت، و توی جیبش گذاشت؛ به تابلوِ خیابان نگاه کرد، و بعد به ساعتش؛ چندتایی پیرمرد جلوِ مغازه‌ ای روی صندلی نشسته بودند؛ سیگار می‌کشیدند و دنیا را مثل تلویزیون تماشا می‌کردند، - گفتم: «به نظرم خیلی عجیب است وقتی به‌اش فکر می‌کنم» - چی؟ - که اگنس آن‌جا کار می‌کرد؛ شاید بابام را می‌شناخت؛ یا نمی‌شناخت، اما شاید آن روز صبح اگنس سفارش قهوه‌ اش را گرفته بوده؛ بابا آن‌جا بود، توی رستوران؛ جلسه داشت؛ شاید اگنس قهوه بابا را دوباره پُر کرده بود یا همچین چیزی؛ - ممکن است؛ - شاید با هم مرده‌ اند؛ می‌دانستم که نمی‌داند چی در این مورد بگوید، چون معلوم است که با هم مرده بودند؛ سئوال واقعی این بود که چه‌ طوری با هم مرده بودند، مثلا هر کدام‌شان یک طرف رستوران بوده‌ اند، یا کنار هم یا یک‌جور دیگر.؛ شاید با هم رفته بودند پشت بام.؛ توی بعضی از عکس‌ها که می‌شد دید مردم با هم پریده‌ اند و دست هم را نگه داشته‌ اند.؛ پس شاید این کار را کرده باشند.؛ یا شاید تا موقعی که ساختمان پایین ریخته با هم حرف زده بودند.؛ درباره چی با هم حرف زدند؟ دوتاشان زمین تا آسمان با هم فرق داشتند.؛ شاید درباره من باهاش حرف زده بوده.؛ فکر کردم به‌ اش چی گفته.؛ نمی‌توانستم بگویم این‌که بابا دست یکی دیگر را نگه داشته بود، باعث می‌شد چه فکری درباره‌ اش بکنم.»؛ پایان نقل

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 22/04/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی ...more

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Nov 03, 2011 Jason rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: reviewed, 2011, for-kindle

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This book gives me heavy boots.

On the one hand, Foer writes an interesting story. An eight year-old boy Oskar, two years after his father’s death in the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, embarks on a scavenger hunt, searching for clues to a key his father left behind, a key that he believes opens a mysterious lock somewhere in New York City. Oskar is precocious to say the least. I thought several times that he reminds me a bit of Holden Caulfield, albeit younger and somewhat less pess ...more

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Dec 28, 2008 Laurel rated it it was amazing · 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 "experimental" wri ...more

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Aug 16, 2015 Greta G rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: owned-in-english, this-is-america, also-saw-the-movie-docu-or-series

Extremely beautiful and incredibly lachrymose.

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Mar 28, 2015 Dan rated it liked it

Shelves: 2015

Nine year old Oskar Schell finds a key among his dead father's things and embarks on a quest to find the lock it fits. Will Oskar Schell's quest give him the answers he's looking for?

Quite some time ago, I watched a fragment of the movie based on this book on a rainy day before deciding I wanted to read the book. Now that I've read it, I'm not sure it was the right choice.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is the story of Oskar Schell, a nine year old possible genius with issues whose father di ...more

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Jul 06, 2008 Meredith Holley rated it it was amazing

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

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

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

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 hold in 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 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?
...more

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Nov 12, 2011 K.D. Absolutely rated it really liked it

Recommends it for: Emir

Recommended to K.D. by: Emir

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

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 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 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.
...more

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Jan 05, 2015 Whitney Atkinson rated it it was amazing

Shelves: read-in-2015

One of the most beautifully written and impactful stories ive read.

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Aug 24, 2007 Lucy rated it it was amazing

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

Shelves: favorites

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. While I wo 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. 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. ...more

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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, mainly because I feel very guilty ...more

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Feb 08, 2019 Calista rated it really liked it

Shelves: genre-fantasy, genre-coming-of-age, genre-mystery, 2006, histiorical, genre-drama-tragedy, award-various, bage-young-adult

I really enjoyed this movie. It was well done and touching, so I picked up the book. It is a powerful story told, but I think this is an instance the movie is better than the book.

I didn't like the narration of the grandmother and grandfather running throughout the book. I felt the point of view worthy of our time was o Oskar Schell. I wanted the other parts to hurry up and be over. It was strange and didn't seem to have that much import on the story really.

I did like the book. There were some ...more

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Jul 19, 2012 Florence (Lefty) MacIntosh rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Anyone I can talk into reading it

Recommended to Florence (Lefty) by: Hooked by Title and Cover - Brilliant

Shelves: wit, lit-usa, reviewed, 2012, favs-recent, dark, war, wacko-realistic-fiction

According to E. Wilson 'No two persons ever read the same book.' I love an author that allows a story to just unfold; that leaves me to draw my own conclusions. I love that it wasn’t just about 9-11 but also war torn Dresden and Hiroshima. Well my spin is this is probably the most powerful anti-war book I’ve ever read.
The stream of consciousness writing style is the perfect choice. It’s lyrical and appropriate, just go with it. It’s not depressing; in fact parts of it are really funny. Then aga ...more

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Sep 20, 2014 Violet wells rated it liked it

Shelves: contemporary-american-fiction, new-york, 21st-century

There are quite a few novels that you either love or hate. Not so many that you can simultaneously both love AND hate. To admire there’s the high tide imaginative vitality of the writing; to irritate the relentless contrived cutesy-cutesy tugging at the heartstrings.

EL&IC purports to be a novel about big bangs - 9/11, Hiroshima and Dresden - but you might say this novel is more about the consequences of over indulging feeling. There’s Oskar who misses his dad who dies on 9/11 and there’s his gra ...more

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Mar 30, 2010 Joel rated it liked it

Recommends it for: Nicole Krauss

Recommended to Joel by: Jonathan Safran Foer

Shelves: 52-in-2010, 2010, read-while-in-a-foreign-land, look-at-me-look-at-me

LOOK I WROTE A BOOK WITH PICTURES IN IT AND SOMETIMES PAGES OF NONSENSE. I GOT THE IDEA FROM DOUGLAS COUPLAND IN 1991. GIVE ME AN AWARD.

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Dec 16, 2014 Brian Yahn rated it it was ok

Oskar, a thoughtful kid full of quirks and handicaps, finds a key. So the journey he goes on to find its (and his own) place in the world should be inspiring at least. But although Oskar learns all sorts of interesting things everywhere he goes, he never really makes any progress. And similarly, neither does the story.

Right from the start, the prose is sharp, and the characters stand out. The father particularly is just as likable as can be. But the story as a whole moves in too many directions ...more

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About Jonathan Safran Foer

Jonathan Safran Foer

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Jonathan Safran Foer is the author of two bestselling, award-winning novels, Everything Is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, and a bestselling work of nonfiction, Eating Animals. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.