I'm trying to sort out my feelings with this book... there were parts that disturbed me and made me feel uncomfortable, like the way the grandfather and grandmother were intimate. There are places where I tried to go along with the story but couldn't stop myself from going, this is just too contrived. Why couldn't the mom handle things differently? Why is she so absent? Why go allow a child to dig up a grave? I can't help but feel like I've been taken on a wild goose chase with an ending that left me unsatisfied. I was especially upset how Mr. Black was just tossed aside. I honestly tried to understand the grandfather's trauma but I still didn't agree with his decisions to leave but then have to write so many letters to someone who won't even read them, or again try to enter the life of his wife and wanting to know his grandson after leaving her so cruelly in the first place..I feel somehow in this story I got stuck in a nothing place.

Afterthoughts: I don't for a second believe Oskar would have waited out the rings instead of picking up the phone right away.
> I still feel like the grandmother was almost like a stifled character, and her husband was awful to her.
> I don't understand why the grandparents wrote about such intimate details for their child/grandchild to read.

What can I really say about this book? It's one of the most special books to me. Reviews are never objective, but it's extra difficult for me to even try to be an objective reviewer with this one because it just means so much to me. It was one of the first books I ever read as a young adult that got me into reading back in 2012. I fell in love with how this book made me think and feel about life and love and all the big things out there. And revisiting it now at 30 years old I feel exactly the same towards it which is so unique and special. I can't say much else but here are some of my favorite quotes to show you why I love it so much.

-"My life story is the story of everyone I've ever met."

-"...it was one of the best days of my life, a day during which I lived my life and didn't think about my life at all."

-"I like to see people reunited, maybe that's a silly thing, but what can I say, I like to see people run to each other, I like the kissing and the crying, I like the impatience, the stories that the mouth can't tell fast enough, the ears that aren't big enough, the eyes that can't take in all of the change, I like the hugging, the bringing together, the end of missing someone."

-"I couldn't explain my need to myself, and that's why it was such a beautiful need, there's nothing wrong with not understanding yourself."

-"So many people enter and leave your life! Hundreds of thousands of people! You have to keep the door open so they can come in! But it also means you have to let them go!"

-"Time was passing like a hand waving from a train that I wanted to be on."

Oh, wow.

This is a book about grief and how to deal with the loss of someone you love. Oskar lost his father in 9/11 and is obviously filled with sorrow, pain and also guilt. He loved his father dearly, and he doesn’t feel like he have that same special connection with has mother.
When he one day finds a lost key of his father’s, he decides to undertake the endeavour to find out what this key opens. This takes him on a journey all around New York which helps him cope with the loss of his father and also opens up his world.
Naturally, this story (or most of it) is told from Oskar’s perspective and I loved those passages. The rest of the book, though, is told from a different perspective, and I didn’t like that as much. Oskar was the person I cared the most for, and I was very satisfied with the beautiful ending that makes the loose ends come together.
This was a touching and warm story that I at times devoured and at other times was a bit bored with, which is an odd combination. But all in all, I think this is an important piece of work because it gives you an insight into what goes on inside Oskar’s head and, ultimately, how he learns to deal with his father’s devastating death. I wonder what the story would be like told from the mother’s perspective...

Oskar Schell is a 9 year old New Yorker. His self-made visiting card describes him as "an inventor, amateur entomologist, Francophile, letter writer, pacifist, natural historian, percussionist, romantic, Great Explorer, jeweller, detective, vegan, and collector of butterflies." Intelligent beyond his years and almost too smart for his own good, his world collapses suddenly when his father dies in the September 11th terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.

In the aftermath of this tragedy, he happens to discover a key left by his father in a vase. Considering it one last treasure hunt to connect with his father, Oskar takes it on himself to locate the lock to which the key corresponds. On the way, he meets many New Yorkers, most of whom have something to teach him and something to learn from him. Oskar's search becomes yours, his joy becomes yours, his heartbreak becomes yours.

EL&IC was a wonderful read for me. It does not just have a well-written story but also a interesting (maybe even quirky!) writing style that keeps you moving on steadily. The book has as many light-hearted moments as intense ones. It even contains stories of fictional WWII bombing survivors within its narrative, and those are really horrifying.

I couldn't help but feel that Oskar has some mild form of autism because of certain behavioural aspects manifested by him in the story, but the author doesn't mention this. This made me connect to the book even more. Usually, if the protagonist is depicted as a sufferer of some intellectual disability, then the author gives the prime position in the story to the disorder than the character. In this book, it is Oskar who is the focus of the story, not his behaviour.

A word of caution though. Just because the protagonist is a 9 year old, don't hand this book to your children, not even young teens. I'd recommend this only for mature readers because of its language (which is quite vulgar for a 9 year old) and certain graphic scenes of violence and death.

If you are an audiobook listener, then go for the audiobook without any hesitation. The audio version has multiple narrators, and each of them plays their character so wonderfully that you can't help but live the same emotions while hearing them read. They enhance the book even further.

This has been a nice soul-satisfying book. It's been a really long time since I've smiled and sobbed in the course of a single book.

My rating: 4.5/5

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بی‌نهایت، بی‌نهایت دوسش داشتم.. با همه‌ی سادگیش بارها قلبمو به درد آورد و غرق لذتم کرد. پر از عشق‌بازی کلمه‌ها و یه تایپوگرافی عجیب غریب و سرشار از خلاقیت.
داستان غم و زجری که جنگ‌ها به انسان‌ها تحمیل میکنن که خوندن ازش حتی برای چندمین بار هم تلخه، انگار اگه تا پایان دنیا هم ازش بخونی تلخیش همینقدر تازه است و دردناک..
و یکی از قشنگ ترین صفحای پایانو داشت، کلمات آخر و عکس‌ها فوق‌العاده بودند.. خیلی خیلی بلند، نزدیک و دوست داشتنی..

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is extremely sad and incredibly stylish. For a thin plot, Foer was able to extend it by shifting narratives, delightful monologues, empty pages, pages with one liners, pages with black and white pictures, pages with colored pictures, pages with scribbled names, pages that look like a manuscript with editor's proofreading symbols and by several back stories (Hiroshima bombing, Dresden bombing, etc). That’s a delicate style that I think only gifted writers can pull away with. The story is simple: about a boy whose father died in 9/11 and a couple of years after, he found a mysterious key under a flower vase inside his father's dresser. The search led him to find out more stories about his father. The search led him to the answers to his questions, meet many interesting people, find a way to heal his wounds and move on with his life.

The narrator is Oskar Schell, a 9-y/o son of the 9/11 victim. Oskar is intellectually curious, sensitive, pacifist, musically-inclined, earnest. I am not sure if that is really how an American 9-y/o thinks, feels and acts. When I was at that age, I had a classmate who died of drowning while she and her family were having a picnic aboard a boat on a Black Saturday. I got sad because that classmate of mine was close to me but I did not have those deep and mind-blowing thoughts that Foer made for Oskar. I also thought that his thinking is sometimes vague, too mature and not childish at all. There were times I thought that he was like Oskar Matzerath, the man-child (or the man who decided not to grow up) in Gunter Grass’ opus, The Thin Drum minus of course the glass-shattering shrieks. Instead, the Oskar in this novel cries in every opportunity and says “I love you” as his second language like a big star in an afternoon television series. When he cries and says that he loves you, that’s heart shattering and you’ll say that Foer is a genius and this book should have a movie. Yes, there is an on-going production of this and you will see the output on December 25, 2011 at your favorite U.S. theaters :

n  n

Guaranteed to make you cry especially if you are a male and have a quirky relationship with your father or with your son. In my opinion, its melodrama borders between manipulative and sincere. In other words, it almost felt like it uses 9/11 to squirt tears from its readers and almost felt like it was just disrespectfully cashing out sympathy for the victims at the expense of the victims’ families and friends. However, I think that reading this in 2011 and not in 2005 when the book was first published is better because many of the families and friends of those who perished have already moved on with their lives. That despite the pain and much more the good memories that their loved ones left behind with them. Those will never ever go away.

Guaranteed to blow you away especially if you are used to reading linear narrative and straightforward and precise storytelling. I thought that the back stories were all pieces of thoughts that the boy or the father had so I just read them on strides. I did not know that those will be part of the grand scheme in the end. These little things could catch you unguarded and I thought that it was cleverly done: to turn a simple predictable a bit hallow story into an unbelievably and surprisingly memorable read. Unlike the funky style of Jennifer Egan in A Visit From a Goon Squad or the loaded style of Samantha Sotto’s Before Ever After, Foer’s alternating milieus and time periods are not confusing at all and they seem appropriate given the impact, sadness and confusion brought about by 9/11.

My favorite part is when the father said in the telephone: "Are you there? Are you there?" instead of saying "Is anyone there? Is anyone there?" For me this means that the father was hoping that his son was there because that would give him peace of mind. A father always think of his child's life or safety first before his own.

My first time to read a Foer and I am just blown away.

از بابت یک چیز مطمئنم؛ اگه یه روز بخوام برای همیشه زمین ُ ترک کنم [درحالی که زنده‌ام ، البته.] این کتاب ُ با خودم می‌برم.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is a frustating, at times infuriating, book by a very talented writer who mostly takes the low road by wringing cheap sentiment from the tragedy of 9/11.

The story of Oskar's odyssey to find the lock that fits the key he finds in his dad's closet is unbelievable and maudlin, and as a character he is unrealistic and annoying. He is wise and empathic way beyond the capacity of any nine-year-old. He's often smarter and more emotionally mature than the adults, but when the author doesn't want him to, he doesn't see the obvious. Adults in a cartoonish New York receive him like it's Halloween and he's a cute trick or treater.

The author can write beautifully, and he's at his best in the sections not told by the child, those written by his grandparents. Because of those sections I don't regret reading the book. They are at times brilliant, startling, honest and genuinely moving.

But the bulk of this book is cheaply sentimental and worse. I won't spoil it but something that happens at the end is cringeworthy. Even in the context of a totally unrealistic plot this scene stands out for its cartoonish qualities and bad taste.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is mostly a maudlin mashup of unrealistic elements. It deals with other tragedies seriously, but mines the events of 9/11 for cheap sentimentality.

A 9-11 novel, narrated by a precocious 9 year old who lost his father. I feel strongly that folks who are currently adoring Fredrik Backman or Matt Haig's work would also enjoy this one. It has the same way of using a variety of devices to look right at unpleasant things while not being unpleasant to read. It also has an amiable and optimistic view of humanity. Foer introduces us to a massive cast of characters, who are all generally doing their best.

The nattering first person style means that pages turn quickly and easily, and the specificity of the setting means you really feel you've been taken somewhere real.

For me, however, it was ultimately too sweet. I needed it to either be 150 fewer pages, so that the thought exercise could really shine, or I needed it to be a little less gentle in its handling of the reader. JOSTLE ME. JOSTLE ME!

Also note: I tackled this book as part of my 2023 reading challenge to read books from this crowd-sourced list of recommended standalone novels published between 1985-2007: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/...

I am a brittle and crotchety reader, so please don't take my opinions on these novels as universal.

I hate to keep pointing out to everyone that I listened to the audio version of this or that book, as it gets repetitive after awhile, and for the most part, it is usually irrelevant. In this case, though, it seems to have made a difference.

When I finished Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, I went online to read some reviews. I was surprised by what I read. It seemed that just about everyone who gave their opinion on this book, whether positive or negative, commented on Foer's "experimental" writing style. Apparently, Foer would at times not use proper punctuation, or would clump words on top of each other so that they appeared to look like scribbles, or would insert photographs, or even leave several pages blank. I hate to look like I'm trying to be cute by using the phrase which appeared so often in the book, but my reaction to this was exactly that: What the.... ?

There is no evidence of any of these experimental writing tactics in the audio version whatsoever. I mean, there is mention of a memoir having nothing but blank pages, but that is part of the story itself... there was no sense of actual blank pages within Foer's book. There was no sense of words piling up on each other, either. And, clearly, there were no pictures.

I'm not sure how I would have felt about the book with all of the above thrown in. Some seemed to have found it distracting, and perhaps I'd have felt the same. Without them, though, you are left with nothing but the story itself, pure and uncluttered, and which I found to be beautifully written.

The narration by the various actors was also superbly done. Sometimes I get annoyed by the fact that my current situation limits me to audiobooks, as I miss having a real book in my hand and reading the words on a page in my own voice with my own interpretation. And then I come across a book like this one, and I am glad. Some books, it seems, are even better read aloud.

There are books that affect me and then there are books that kill me. This falls in the latter. I cried on the couch, I cried on the bus, I cried at stoplights, I cried at work.. I cried more over this book than I did on the actual September 11th. Then I became upset that this piece of fiction could invoke such melancholia. Can I use the excuse of being in shock during the actual event? That it seemed like a movie?

I have no excuse.

Flash back: The second half of 1994, my then boyfriend and I living in the East Village, 23 years old and clueless. We were broke most of the time, not much into clubbing, so about 4 out of 7 nights we would walk. Never north.. only through the Village or SoHo and eventually our meandering would lead us to the Towers. No matter what path we’d take, it was our destination. I remember many nights sitting on this ratty red paint peeled bench staring across the river at Jersey, specifically the Colgate sign, and just talking about everything. Hours sped by and we’d drag our sorry asses back to the train and to our tiny apartment. I remember nights where I’d hug the side of Tower One, pressing against it and lift my head as far back as I could and stare up until the glass met the sky and I’d get so dizzy I’d stumble back. I remember the night that we decided to marry, I remember exchanging our vows leaning against the railing staring up, always up.

I haven’t been to New York in 13 years, I can’t even imagine a New York without those buildings.

Anyway…

There are 43 ‘Incrediblys’ and 63 ‘Extremelys’ within this book. Does anyone really ever use those adverbs anymore? Is anything ever extreme or incredible enough for us? My daughter has taken to using ‘perfectly’ in almost every sentence and it brings a smile to my face each time.

The journey that the boy, Oskar, takes in this book is beautiful. The need to feel close to his father who died in the attacks, to spend just a bit more time with him. While Oskar is a bit unbelievable as a character, I felt that that was soon overshadowed by the images presented. I know I do this a lot in reviews, but I can’t help it: Lines like “Being with him made my brain quiet. I didn’t have to invent a thing.” or “ My insides don’t match up with my outsides.” and “It takes a life to learn how to live.”

I’m a sucker for a good line.

When Oskar is anxious he describes it as ‘wearing heavy boots’ and when his Grandmother likes something or in a good mood she uses the term ‘that was One Hundred Dollars’ and then there’s a whole mention of a ‘Birdseed shirt’ that I’m still unclear about but enjoy the imagery of.

But, this isn’t just Oskar’s journey.. this is also about Oskar’s grandparents and that piece is as strong as his story, sometimes stronger. I won’t go into that anymore, I’ll let you read about it.

Some have called this ‘gimmicky’ or ‘precious’ but I was truly moved by this story and combined with the images presented, it will stay with me for a very long time to come. As will 1994.