*Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

bc extremely loud

            “Heavy boots,” a brilliant description of the weight a 9 year-old boy feels trying to cope with the death of his father while holding on tightly to a secret.    Jonathan Safran Foer created a beautiful, intelligent, and precocious child for us to follow on his passage through his grief.  Oskar Schell noticed that his heavy boots got lighter when he started writing letters.  His first letter was to Stephen Hawking author of, “A Brief History of Time.”    Many other letters followed to all sorts of people.  Young Oskar also made jewelry, played the tambourine and was an inventor.  Oskar may think like an adult, but his emotional level is that of a 9 year-old boy.  And Foer gives us a very believable character. 

 

            The novel jumps to a letter to my unborn child.  At first, this is a little confusing, but stick with it.  The novel begins to close around a family dealing with distant as well as current tragedies.  The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center are still so fresh for Americans, but there have been so many unbelievable sufferings that people have had to endure.  And, this is where I think Foer’s novel really captured me.  This is a novel about dealing with grief and not the politics of blame.  There are no direct assaults on anyone or group.  Oskar’s family is still dealing with the bombing of Dresden.  The Royal Air Force and the US Army Air Force bombed the city of Dresden between February 13 and the 15, 1945.  The civilian casualties were between 24,000 and 44,000.  So many innocent people were killed in both incidents. 

 

            Oskar finds a key in a beautiful blue vase in his dad’s closet and the name Black, and immediately thinks it is a clue left to him by his father.  Oskar’s dad, Thomas, always played intellectual, clue-based games of hide and seek with him before he died.   Oskar begins a journey to find what the key opens and this mysterious “Black,” and to become even closer to him in death.  Oskar encounters people who help him, and others who he helps on this journey.

 

            While Oskar is out and about, his grandma and grandpa are also trying to come to terms with both their past grief and the loss of their son, Thomas.  The grandmother will continue to survive; the question is whether she will ever to be happy.  The grandfather just doesn’t seem to move on, maybe he is too broken to fix.

 

            The novel is peppered with pictures and one-sentenced pages.  Oskar collected most of the pictures in his journey with the key.  The most heart wrenching is the man jumping from the World Trade Center.  Oskar even enlarged the photo to see if it was his father. 

 

            Foer’s Oskar chapters are brilliant and totally believable.  How amazing to write through a 9 year old and convey such emotion.  I also thought that the grandmother and grandfather were very interesting characters and would provide a lot to talk about in book club discussions.  The absence of a fleshed-out mother character is also interesting and worth discussion for book club. 

 

            The main discussion, of course, would be dealing with grief.  The characters all handle this journey differently, as I suspect we all do.  I think this novel is a perfect novel for book clubs, but be careful it does deal with the death of loved ones and may not be appropriate if a member of your book club has recently suffered a loss.

 

Rating: 8.5

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