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| Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel | 
| Author: Jonathan Safran Foer
Publisher: Mariner Books
Category: Book
List Price: $13.95
Buy New: $5.42
You Save: $8.53 (61%)
New (66) Collectible (4) from $5.42
Avg. Customer Rating:  314 reviews
Sales Rank: 6796
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 368
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.9
ISBN: 0618711651
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN: 9780618711659
ASIN: 0618711651
Publication Date: April 4, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 LOVED this book June 26, 2008
It takes a lot for a book to make me laugh - and I was laughing already during the first paragraph. This book also made me sob.
The story is so well told and the characters are so human that you can't help but become invested in them - you feel their emotions.
As a 20-something female, I loved the use of the narrators voice in this story. You hear the story through the point of view of a child and a grandparent - which seemed very unique to this book.
Excellent Book June 26, 2008
This book made me cry and call my family to tell them I love them. It's very touching, and it feels very real. Foer writes magnificently: he avoids letting the tragedy of 9/11 speak for itself in terms of emotional affectivity. I highly recommend it.
The first book I have cried to. May 17, 2008
This book was one of the most (or the most) beautiful book I have ever read.
It completely puts into perspective the real relationship between father and child, mother and child, grandfather and grandchild and grandmother and grandchild. It shows you the power of being the same blood, and also it teaches you something. This book taught me to always, always say what your heart or gut wants to say. Never hold back. Or else you will spend your life writing what you wanted to say in letters, letters that will never be sent.
Tugs at the heart and still keeps you laughing. April 29, 2008
Like his other wildly popular "Everything is Illuminated," this book is about a young man's journey to find his roots. In this tale, we follow the life and exploits of Oskar Schell, whose family lives in the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Oskar is one of those kids whose body belies the age of his soul. He's extremely intelligent, speaks French, makes jewellery for those he cares for, is a vegan, and is forever paying attention. Unfortunately, he carries with him a secret. The guilt of it eats him from inside out. Unfortunately, his shrink, who's as inept with children of Oskar's sensitivity and (inner) maturity as most adults would be, isn't being very skilled at pulling out the story of the guilt. It all goes as it does, with Oskar struggling to cope with a world that's not ready for him, after losing the one person who truly "got" him (his dad), until the fortuitous day that Oskar finds a small envelope with a key. The envelope has but one word on it.
Black.
Off runs Oskar, searching the Internet, the phone book, and every other scrap of information gathering tool he can get his hands on. We follow Oskar's journey through the five boroughs of Manhattan, with a plucky olderly gentleman as his sidekick. We meet people from all walks of life, and make friends along the way (as Oskar is apt to do with everyone).
As important as the very engaging story is Foer's use of more than just straight prose to suck you into the world of Oskar. You don't just get page after page of straight text. You get to see little glimpses of Oskar, via photographs, drawings, letters, and various other elements. It's like you get a story, a collage, and a different world all rolled into one. It's highly engaging, and definitely worth picking up.
Worth waiting for April 25, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
It's hard not to compare the convoluted story telling here to the same techniques handled more
skillfully in other books. The low-rez photos have been done-notably by Walker EvansLET US NOW PRAISE FAMOUS MEN and James Agee. The multiple-narrator strategy has been done without damaging the plot or suspense by Lynn Hoffman bang BANG: A Novel.
In fact, the first 100 pages of this book have a lot of irritating characteristics. The ridiculously precocious Oskar who seems to exist only to show off the author's cleverness, the unnamed switches in perspective and narration are just a few.
However, there's no doubt that as the plot unfolds, the gradually revealed mystery makes up for early annoyances.(It took me a week to read the first 110 pages and I read the rest in a weekend.) What Foer does is gradually, almost reluctantly reveal the complexities behind the family life of the man, his father, who died in the attack on the World Trade Center. We go from a painful exploration of a boy's almost unfathomable grief to a slowly developing awareness of the the complexities of loss and the beauty that can be created from it.
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