Review: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Jonathan Safran Foer
Published April 4th 2006 by Mariner Books (first published January 1st 2005)

My rating:      

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is full of beautiful contradictions: finding and losing, loving and hating, the spaces between something and nothing, a boy dressed in all white looking for Black, creating a voice while keeping silent, looking back at life while trying to move forward.

The primary narrator is a 9 year old boy named Oskar. I could describe him as curious, precocious but he's just plain odd. He wears all white, learns French and has numerous characteristic that should make him totally unrealistic. Yet Jonathan Safran Foer makes him like able and somehow relatable. His father died in one of the towers in 9/11. Oskar grieves for his father, and the book is about how he searches for ways to connect with him. Other narrators include Oskar's grandparents who have also experienced an unspeakable loss. The author explores life and grief in a deeply powerful way.

I wanted to read the book before seeing the movie. However now after reading the novel, I have zero desire to see the film. The novel was visually powerful: the changes in fonts, dialogue format and photos. The powerful use of the photos made me cry, and not the blink away tears kind, but the take my glasses off and redo my makeup kind of tears. I'm not sure what the English professors would call this particular style, hyper realism, post modern or whatever; but I enjoyed the non traditional structure. I wouldn't want to read a large amount of novels like this because it might loose its power.

I am emotionally exhausted after reading this novel, but grateful to Safran Foer for giving me the experience.