Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer

This week I read Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. The movie came out this past weekend, and when I went to see it I loved it. Needless to say, this book seemed like a natural selection since it dealt with a young boy experiencing the loss of his father's death and how he copes with the tragedy.

After his father, Thomas, gets killed in the 9/11 attacks, Oskar Schell finds a mysterious key in an envelope with one work: "Black." He then sets out on a journey across the five boroughs of New York, meeting in alphabetical order various different people with the same last name. He is desperate to find what the key unlocks, something that he hopes will bring him closer to his father.

Because Oskar fears public transportation, he is determined to get to all of his destinations by walking. Here we see a shot from the movie of him with his Tambourine, and a packet that has his map, some snacks, and other various means for survival.

"I printed out the frames from the Portuguese videos and examined them extremely closely. There's one body that could be him. It's dressed like he was, and when I magnify it until the pixels are so big that it stops looking like a person, sometimes I can see glasses. Or think I can. But I know I probably can't. It's just me wanting it to be him."

"You want him to have jumped?"

"I want to stop inventing. If I could know how he died, exactly how he died, I wouldn't have to invent him dying inside an elevator that was stuck between floors, which happened to some people, and I wouldn't have to imagine him trying to crawl down the outside of the building, which I saw a video of one person doing on a Polish site, or trying to use a tablecloth as a parachute, like some of the people who were in Windows on the World actually did. There were so many different ways to die, and I just need to know which was his."

Later in the book we meet The Renter, a curious older man who lives with his grandmother and doesn't speak. Oskar finds a companion in him because he feels he can talk to this man like he talked to his father. The Renter begins to accompany Oskar on his searches and helps him plan.

I loved this book. It's much different from anything I've ever read. Foer's characters are very specific to him. I would highly recommend this book, as well as the movie. The emotions young Oskar experiences are very complicated, and he begins to realize with frustration that not everything has a logical explanation. It's something that the reader can relate to, feeling like a close friend to Oskar after reading in to his personal thoughts and feelings.