Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

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Editorial reviews

Synopsis
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's closet. It is a search which leads him into the lives of strangers, through the five boroughs of New York, into history, to the bombings of Dresden and Hiroshima, and on an inward journey which brings him ever closer to some kind of peace.

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Customer reviews

review by: Cathlin Flowers date: 2008-03-30 rating:
What an Exquisite Book
This book blew me away. What an exquisite read. The journey that the author takes you on is one you'll never forget. In part, incredibly funny, heart breakingly sad, always authentic. This is without a doubt the best book I've read this century. What a win. Read it.

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review by: date: 2008-01-06 rating:
A brave and bold experimental approach that worked for me
Oskar is nine years old, living in a New York apartment and coping with the death of his father a couple of years earlier in the Twin Towers. Foer gives voice to this questing, energetic little boy in a prose style that crackles and soars and in doing so reflects Oskar's imaginative interior dialogues. Coming relatively early (2005) in the novelistic response to 9/11, this book sets itself dangerous challenges in the person of its protagonist and its form of execution.

In some respects, I was reminded of the protagonist in Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time - in the combination of intellectual precocity and social naivety. But Foer sets this story against a larger historical backdrop and within a more detailed and universal emotional landscape.

The book plays with various novelistic conventions by including photographs, diagrams and, in one heart rending section, as the story becomes more and more intense, the line spacing decreases until the words are increasingly superimposed on the previous ones and, for three more pages, the image darkens with the feelings. I am not always persuaded by the benefits of such experimental techniques, but in this case this, and the use of similarly unconventional devices, seems such an original and forceful use of form and completely suited to the communicative task the author has set himself.

The prose is a joy to read and, despite the tragic events with which it deals, there are many intensely funny moments. I read recently that, instead of the quiet calm of an author's studio, Foer chooses to write in one of New York's biggest public libraries where other `readers' chat, text, flirt and hang out. The voice of the city, the vibrancy of its life, and the huge wound of its recent tragedy, all grab and shake you as you read this wonderful book.

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review by: date: 2007-12-21 rating:
I just finished reading this wonderful book
I just finished reading this wonderful book, and I really can't describe all the feelings swirling inside of me. This is more than a book with a story, it is an experience. I never describe the plot of the book, because Amazon does it very well, and of course other people do it in their reviews....so no need. Well, even if I wanted to describe this book I couldn't. So again, I will just tell you why I loved it. Mr. Foer is a wonderful writer. I had not read his first book yet, although I will do that now, but something in the description of this book caught my eye, so I tried it. I laughed and cried and even when I was laughing, I was profoundly sad. I loved the characters and their flaws, their fears, their stories, their realistic humanity even among such unrealistic situations. I just can't describe how much I loved this book or why, but it has been put on my shelf of favorite books, to be read and reread, or experienced and experienced again. Again, it made me so sad and yet, when I was done, the sadness was mixed with such wonder and even hope!! I'd also recommend reading Tino Georgiou's bestselling novel--The Fates--if you haven't read it yet!

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review by: James date: 2007-12-06 rating:
Completely original and very brilliant
This book is a must read. It is beautifully written, brilliantly constructed and has a wonderful, heart-warming story.

Thank you Mr Foer


review by: katywheatley date: 2007-11-29 rating:
My best book of 2007
All year I have been searching for a book which would touch my soul, engage me and make me sad when it ended. It's taken until nearly December, but I found it.
This book tells the story of 9 year old Oskar Schell who loses his father on 9/11 and spends the book trying to come to terms with that loss. It's complex in so many ways. Oskar obviously has some kind of autism and his obssessive behaviour forms a large part of the life and rhythm of the book, his routines and compulsions intensify his need to stay anchored to reality and contrast with his feelings that without his father his world is unravelling.
The book also tells the story of Oskar's grandparents, through their own interwoven narratives. Their tragedy, surviving the Dresden fire storm of World War II, complements and shadows the story of 9/11, and gives shape to what it means to survive something like that and live with it.
The shape of the book itself is fascinating, with pictures from Oskar's file of things he fears, in his what happened to me folder, his grandfather's letters, the day books his mute grandfather writes in. This jigsaw of pieces shows how fractured lives are put back together again, and that life isn't neat and seamless with one uninterrupted narrative. It is jerky and bitty, and full of stops and starts and diversions.
A beautiful, heart-rending book, which is both tragic and hopeful.

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