Ci si può svuotare da tutte le lacrime?
No Oskar, non si può, ci saranno sempre nuove lacrime anche per vecchi ricordi.

Ho pianto un googolplex di lacrime ed ho avuto le scarpe pesantissime durante tutta la lettura davvero, tanto da farmi un livido per te piccolo...

L'11 settembre 2001 alle 14.45 rientravo da scuola. Ricordo di essere entrata in casa e di aver visto mia mamma impalata davanti alla TV. Non sapevo ancora cosa fosse successo, ma l'ho vista preoccupata. Dopo un paio d'ore, il primo crollo della prima torre colpita, ricordo di aver pensato :"cazzo, che disastro"....il tempo di realizzare il tutto e mi veniva da piangere tutte le volte che al TG passavano le immagini della gente che scappava, ricoperta di cenere, sangue e terrore negli occhi.

Oskar, ti avrei voluto abbracciare per tutto quello che hai passato, ti avrei accompagnato nella ricerca di qualcosa che alla fine era niente. Sono stata male al pensiero che un bambino possa avere così tanta paura di vivere.
La storia di Oskar, del suo papà, dello strano "amore" tra nonna e nonno e di tutte le persone che hanno ruotato intorno alla sua vita è stata straziante, dolorosa, ma il coraggio e la determinazione di questo piccolo uomo beh, non ha eguali.

"Non capivo perché avevo bisogno di aiuto, dato che a me sembrava che quando muore il tuo papà è naturale avere le scarpe pesanti, e che se non le hai, allora sì che ti serve aiuto."

This was horrible. The writing was horrible. The book jumped around and around and was so hard to follow. It was like reading something written by someone who was half squirrel and half crack head. Instead of creating colorful and deep characters using words, he used punctuation. The grandfather spoke using an abundance of useless commas, the grandmother used lots of periods and Mr. Black spoke in sentences using only exclamation points. I was thankful no spoke by asking only questions. If I would have seen a page full of question marks I think I might have thrown the book across the room! I found Oskar to be the only unique and real character in the book, but after awhile he even started to annoy me. His little quirks were too over the top, like the author was trying to compensate and distract the reader from the nonexistent plot. A boy loses his father and finds a key in an envelope with the name "Black" on it. We go through pages and pages of meeting lots of people with the name "Black" only to find out the key had nothing to do with his dad in the first place. He has weird grandparents who like to write him letters about their sex life and who really didn't add anything to the plot of the story that I could tell. Then he digs up his father's empty coffin and fills it with letters, the end. (Seriously?????)

I found the subject matter heart breaking, and did tear up at times, but it's hard not to tear up when anyone talks about that horrible day. I hated the pictures the most. The book had pages of meaningless pictures. But one picture stood out from the rest and made me cringe. He filled over a dozen pages with pictures of someone's loved one falling to their death from one of the burning towers of 9/11. I am outraged by this! Horrible!!!!!!

I picked this book up two days ago to read the first page (I personally think you can tell a lot about a book from the first page) and was hooked. I'm in the middle of another book, which is a good book, but the jarring nature of the prose reeled me in. The first chapter is called, "What the?" which is exactly what I was thinking. I was instantly reminded of another great book, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, where you actually experience the book as well as read it. While I wouldn't want every book to be written like that, because it's a bit like riding a roller coaster in the dark with strobe lights, it sure is fun every once in a while.

Jonathan Safran Foer, the author, writes the tale of a nine year old boy named Oskar Schell, whose father was in the World Trade Center when the planes flew into them on September 11th. I think its fair to say that the boy becomes extremely troubled after his father's death, but with the unconventional childhood he had, it didn't take much to push him over the edge. His father was an atheist and Oskar wasn't raised to believe in an afterlife or heaven or that people have spirits.

When no body is recovered, his mother buries an empty coffin and she and Oskar have this conversation: "It's just an empty box." "It's more than an empty box." "Why would I want to spend eternity next to an empty box?" Mom said, "His spirit is there," and that made me really angry. I told her, "Dad didn't have a spirit! He had cells!" "His memory is there." "His memory is there," I said, pointing at my head. "Dad had a spirit," she said, like she was rewinding a bit in our conversation. I told her, "He had cells, and now they're on rooftops, and in the river, and in the lungs of millions of people around New York, who breathe him every time they speak!"

The book also tells the story of Oskar's paternal grandparents. The narration changes when both tell their own story. When his grandmother writes, there are no paragraphs and no quotations marks. Lots of odd spacing and most sentences get their own line. She's kind of crazy herself which you know by how she reacts when watching Oskar in his school's play of Hamlet and her conversations with Oskar. Oskar's grandfather...well...that's when you really see crazy. The author uses the most license with him and parts of the book are downright bizarre. Like the eight pages with nothing on them. Or when he starts to write smaller and smaller so that two entire pages are just dark black scribbles because some many words are on top of themselves.

It's more than just tricks on the page, however. The story is really about grief and how Oskar chooses to grieve for his father and how Oskar's grandparents grieved after losing much of what they loved when their city of Dresden was bombed in World War II.

When Oskar finds a key in an envelope with the word "Black" written on it inside a vase in his parent's bedroom, he sets out to discover what it unlocks. He goes about this by finding every person with the last name of "Black" in the five boroughs of New York City and spends almost a year going out on the weekends to ask Aaron, Abel, Amber etc. if they know anything about the key. A few interesting characters and stories get told through this storyline, but the real beauty of this book is how it made me remember and react to the horror of 9/11 again. You kind of forget....with the War on Terror, and the Iraq War and all of the stories that have happened during the last six years how horrible it was to watch those burning buildings go down on live TV. The last 14 pages of the book are pictures Oskar got off of a Portuguese web site that had a picture of a man who had jumped from the building. He put them in reverse order and you see this body in the air going up. The wish of a nine year old boy.

This book is exactly what its title says it is. Extremely and incredibly written. It's different, but I sure liked it.

Sunt fascinată de această carte, plină de emoție, presărată cu mister și intrigă.
Scriitura e una cu totul specială, iar călătoria prin care Oskar se maturizează e captivantă, te ține cu sufletul la gură.

“Why didn't I learn to treat everything like it was the last time. My greatest regret was how much I believed in the future.”

“Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living.”

“Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living.”

“I hope that one day you will have the experience of doing something you do not understand for someone you love.”

Het is die 9/11-thematiek. Dat moment waarop onze Westerse wereld compleet veranderde en het mooie naïef-optimistische wereldbeeld een flinke deuk kreeg die, zo blijkt nu, nooit meer hersteld werd. We hebben het allemaal "dankzij" de televisiebeelden van dichtbij meegemaakt, het is die herkenbaarheid die dit boek zo sterk maakt. Maar dat niet alleen.

Het gaat over Oskar, die zijn vader verloor bij 9/11, een sleutel terugvindt tussen de spullen van zijn vader en op zoek gaat naar het bijhorende slot. Het gaat ook over zijn grootouders, die elkaar niet vonden. Het leven is constant een oefening in afscheid nemen. Het boek vertelt uiteindelijk niet veel meer behalve dat: hoe moet je in godsnaam afscheid nemen. En hoe lastig dat dat is.

En dan is er die fantastische schrijfstijl van Jonathan Safran Foer. Uitzinnig als het over Oskar gaat, wat een heerlijke 9-jarige is dat toch: veel te slim voor zijn leeftijd, maar tegelijkertijd toch een echt kind in hoe hij alles wil verwerken. En wat ingetogener als het standpunt verandert naar de grootouders. Een zwaar thema wordt daardoor op een lichte en erg persoonlijke manier behandeld. Prachtig.

Het verhaal wordt aangevuld met foto's. En het klopt. Het is geen gimmick. Die laatste pagina's zijn de beste laatste pagina's ooit. Die vergeet je nooit.

Een kleine tien jaar geleden riep ik dit boek uit tot mijn lievelingsboek. Na het herlezen te hebben zoveel later kan ik alleen maar zeggen: ja. Dit is zo een ontzettend mooi boek.
Maar echt, zo ontzettend ontzettend ontzettend mooi.

Na destruição de Dresden, pelos aliados entre 13 e 15 de Fevereiro de 1945, morreram cerca de 25 000 pessoas.
Na destruição do World Trade Center, pelos jihadistas no dia 11 de Setembro de 2001, morreram cerca de 3 000 pessoas.
Num ataque morreram alemães, no outro americanos; dizem que um foi legítimo e o outro criminoso. Mas o trauma, o remorso, a revolta, a impotência, o drama, o horror, a dor...dos que não morrem e têm de fazer o luto, é universal e desumano.

Este livro conta a história de quem tem de viver depois:
do Homem que perdeu toda a família em Dresden, onde viveu os maiores horrores que o transformaram para sempre num ser atormentado...
da Criança, que empreende uma investigação para saber como morreu o pai: esmagado num corredor, num elevador, ou foi um dos que se atirou das janelas...
da Mãe que carrega para casa um pedregulho na ilusão de que nele reste, nem que seja um átomo, do seu único filho...
da Esposa que enterra um caixão vazio...

Um livro com uma prosa bonita, uma estrutura original e que transmite uma tristeza infinita.

"houve uma explosão prateada; vi uma mulher com o cabelo louro e o vestido verde em chamas, a correr com um bebé silencioso nos braços; vi seres humanos derretidos, transformados em poças de líquido espesso; vi corpos a crepitarem como brasas..."

"Aviões a embaterem em edifícios.
Corpos a caírem.
Edifícios a desmoronarem-se.
Aviões a embaterem em edifícios."

I don't know if I truly understood or got the full message from this book but I know I enjoyed it from the very first page. It was a story of love but it wasn't a love story. It was funny but it wasn't a comedy. It was sad but it wasn't a tear jerker.

By the second page I'd already stopped to make some notes about my thoughts on Oskar, the young boy whose voice was heard for most of this book. I loved him and his quirky ways, his thought processes, his honesty (most of the time although he did tell quite a lot of lies), his good heartedness and his sense of humour. He made me laugh out loud often and yet he made me want to cry for him too. I suspect he was suffering from a form of PTSD and I simply adored the matter of fact way he referred to his heavy boots when what he was most likely describing was depression or the depths of despair a grieving child would experience in his situation. Oskar had loved his father so desperately and was struggling to cope after losing his dad during the 9/11 terroist attacks .

Whilst we mainly heard from Oskar, we had regular insights into the lives of his grandparents, their lives as children, young adults and from the present time. Their stories continued to bring tears to my eyes and I felt such a sadness at the losses they had experienced. Their stories told of their inability to overcome the traumatic experiences in their own pasts, and the way they had tried to avoid the pain of losing a loved one by trying to avoid love.

I know this summary doesn't do the story justice and it sounds morbid but it really wasn't. I've never heard of this author and can't imagine what other types of books he might write. His story was as unique as his characters so I'm curious to see what else he has out there.

Frankenstein Emotions

Infuriating and baffling that Foer is so widely read. This is appalling schmaltz. He wants us to feel a twinge, maybe tear up, hopefully even bawl, and to do it, ideally, on every page. It isn't enough that a man is losing his ability to speak: his wife has to be going blind. It isn't enough that another man hasn't spoken in two decades: he has to have a bed with three thousand nails driven into it, one for each year since his wife died. It isn't enough to have a heart-rending letter from your father: you have to also have one from a convict who doesn't even know he's been in prison forty years, and anther letter, and another.

At one point there is an unintentional parody of the pulp paperback one-cathartic-moment-per-page formula, when a woman is abandoned by her husband, and everything moves her:

"A dog following a stranger. That made me feel so much. A calendar that showed the wrong month. I could have cried over it. I did. Where the smoke from a chimney ended. How an overturned bottle rested at the edge of a table." (p. 180)

These sentences are separated by four or five spaces, because it isn't enough just to read them: we have to feel the spaces, the emptiness, in the woman's life, and we have to feel it again every time she says anything.

People say the book is well written. But when the writing is good, it is always necessary to say what purpose it serves. The most stupefyingly miasmic adventitious emotional crises are propped up, electrified, by Foer's cleverness: but why do that? Why not write standard Romantic prose? The book is like an emotional Frankenstein, a nineteenth-century romance novel brought to life with McSweeney's style wit and dispatch, given the facsimile of life by jolts of artificial feeling.

The book is a swill of perfumed emotions. It is elaborately artificial and yet gluely emotional: as if the exotic perfumes of Huysmans were to meet the kitschy sentimentality of O Henry. What kind of people feel emotion this way? What kind of reader thinks that real, powerful emotion comes in 300-word bursts, repeated 300 times in the course of a novel? What kind of person is always so close to tears that they are moved by this kind of writing? It's frightening, really, that there are people for whom this is a persuasive account of our emotional lives.

There was a day that I spent lying on my parents’ couch trying to read while my mom had this movie on and my dad sat in his chair nodding in and out of consciousness. I had come down to visit with him as he had just been released from the hospital and sometimes just being there was what he needed, what I needed.

So there I was, trying to read my book while my father tried to get some rest and my mom put the movie on to have something going on in the background of life. It was a movie I didn’t want to watch, not for any particular reason, just not one that had even remotely piqued my interest. As the movie went on I found myself struggling to stay focused on my book and eventually put the book down to watch the movie that had sucked me in. I had to find out, I had to know.

I am glad that I watched the movie as I did end up enjoying it. After finishing it I added it to my TBR list that seems to go on for miles. I figure- the book is always better than the movie so I need to read it and see what I may have missed.

This book was well written just poorly formatted. I found the various points of view to be distracting and with the constant time-jumping, hard to follow at times. I listened to it on audio and I am not sure if that is why all of the time lapses seemed so sudden, but I would be listening for a while before realizing “when” I was in the book. The various POV took away from the overall story and I really wish it had been written from a third person POV rather than three different first person POV’s. I will say that each person was their own person- meaning that I could easily distinguish who was who by how they spoke. (For clarity purposes I must also point out that there were three different narrators but even if I had read a physical copy of the book, I still would have had three very different voices.)

There were aspects of this book that I absolutely loved. The loss and heartbreak of losing a father; the constantly searching for something you’re missing even when you don’t really understand what you are looking for. I felt that there was a great understanding of how much we take for granted, but that it wasn’t ever stated in the preachy- you only get one life so here is your life lesson way. It was done in a way that is easy to relate to if you have ever realized too late what could have been.

“Why didn't I learn to treat everything like it was the last time. My greatest regret was how much I believed in the future.”

I really loved the overall theme of regret and sorrow. That probably sounds depressing to most, but I think it is a very accurate portrayal of life. We always think we have more time even when we know otherwise. We want our stories to be told even though we really can’t seem to figure out what our story is. We want to make up for wrongs we have done even when it is just too late to try.

“I regret that it takes a life to learn how to live.”

There were a couple small moments that took me out of the story. You have this kid who is apparently at an intellectual level far superior to those his own age. He knows what a Neurophysicist is, but not a maternity ward. It just seemed kind of silly to me.

I also could have handled less information about the grandmother posing for sculptures…it was a little too…graphic (?) for a letter that was apparently being written to her grandson. I understand that it is art, but I think that there isn’t a grandson in the world that wants to read about his grandmother’s vagina in any context. That might be an immaturity of mine, but it seemed tacky to me and unnecessary.

Then there is the issue of this 9 year old kid going door to door all over NYC and his mother is seemingly unconcerned about it. Um, ok. I don’t care if my kid is raised there or if he is a genius, he is still 9 years old and he is not walking around NYC all by himself or with a complete stranger that he met going door to door. These were just few examples of minor issues that took me out of the story.

Of all of the POV storylines the grandfather’s was my favorite. I found his story to be the most interesting and really, the saddest. I would have liked to have had more closure to his story but I guess we are all left wondering after most books, so what is one more character to think about? He had my favorite line throughout the entire book though and I couldn’t agree more with him:

“I want an infinitely blank book and the rest of time.”

“La settimana è stata una barba incredibile, a parte quando mi sono ricordato la chiave. Anche se sapevo che a New York ci sono 161.999.999 serrature che non avrebbe aperto, avevo l’impressione che aprisse tutto.”

Ci sono giorni in cui non viene spontaneo alzarsi dal letto. Rimani lì a fissare il soffitto chiedendoti cos’è che muova i tuoi piedi. Ti siedi a tavola e ascolti la gente parlare e intanto la tua testa è altrove. Pensi a persone che sono lontane, a cose che non sono successe però potevano succedere, a cose che potrebbero succedere ma non succederanno, pensi di essere chilometri e chilometri lontano da lì e in testa ti galleggiano milioni di conversazioni possibili. Fai le invenzioni.
Fare le invenzioni secondo me è anche questo, è “essere schiacciati sotto il peso di tutte le vite che non stiamo vivendo”. E non c’è bisogno di chiamarsi Oskar Schell, di avere nove anni e di aver perso il padre nell’attentato dell’undici settembre; non c’è bisogno di essere Oskar Schell per sentirsi Oskar Schell.
In questa settimana passata con Oskar mi sono sentita molto Oskar. Ho litigato furiosamente coi miei genitori, fino ad avere la percezione di averli persi e di essere sola al mondo. Ho rimestato nel ripostiglio dei miei ricordi e delle mie speranze senza trovare indizi che possano riportarmi sulla pista giusta. Ho desiderato spaccare la testa ai tanti Jimmy Snyder che si pavoneggiano sui palcoscenici di questo mondo. Sono stata dal dottor Fein – che in questo caso aveva le sembianze di mia madre – e ho detto una cosa non molto dissimile da questa: “Seppellirò i miei sentimenti nel profondo di me. […] Anche se saranno fortissimi non li lascerò uscire. Se dovrò piangere, piangerò dentro. Se dovrò sanguinare, mi verranno dei lividi. Se il mio cuore comincerà a dare i numeri, non ne parlerò con nessuno al mondo. Tanto non serve. Rovina solamente la vita a tutti.”

Di questo romanzo si è parlato e straparlato, fino a mettere in luce ora una cosa ora l’altra. Ci si è soffermati con pignoleria sui difetti e si è insistito con cecità sui pregi, fino a dimenticare che un libro non è una somma di pregi e di difetti, non è una somma di parti ma un disegno. E come un disegno non è una somma di tratti ma un’unione di tratti, così un romanzo dev’essere qualcosa di organico e di vivo.
E allora io sono d’accordo con chi dice, questo romanzo è un esercizio di stile! questo romanzo vuol essere accattivante e catturare la simpatia del lettore! questo romanzo si avvale di mezzi tipografici scorretti per fare scena! questo romanzo presenta situazioni paradossali, vuol fare della metafora una cosa vera e, cristo, io ci posso credere fino a un certo punto!
Però sono anche d’accordo con chi dice, questo romanzo dimostra una sensibilità squisita! questo romanzo vuol essere una polifonia che unisca tanti dolori, tanti lutti, tante barbarie! questo romanzo dimostra che la narrativa può contare su altri mezzi rispetto ai canali che abbiamo sempre considerato appropriati! questo romanzo coniuga una storia accattivante con una bella scrittura con una documentazione ampia e approfondita!
Poiché sono d’accordo con entrambi, in fondo non sono d’accordo con nessuno. E penso che siamo noi a mancare il cuore delle cose. Sono io a mancare il cuore delle cose quando faccio oscillare il contatore tra le quattro e le cinque stelline. Sono io a mancare il cuore delle cose quando mi rotolo nel letto pensando, Ma Foer… ci fa o ci è?

Il cuore di questo romanzo è una storia di perdita e di contatto.
Oskar perde il padre e perde la bussola, perde la leggerezza, la capacità dell’infanzia di semplificare i problemi. La madre di Oskar perde un marito e perde Oskar, tanto difficile è stabilire con lui un contatto. Il padre di Oskar perde la vita, ma non l’amore che ne tiene vivo il ricordo. Il nonno di Oskar perde un figlio, la donna che amava, la sua famiglia, la sua città sotto i bombardamenti di Dresda e poi perde la voce. La nonna di Oskar perde una sorella e un’amante, perde la famiglia, la sua città sotto i bombardamenti di Dresda e poi perde un marito, un’occasione di reintegrare le parti. I tanti Black che vivono a New York hanno tutti perso qualcosa, chi un amore chi un’occasione chi una chiave. E così non stupisce affatto che il romanzo si impronti su una caccia al tesoro: Oskar, armato solo di una chiave e di un nome (Black), si mette in cerca dell’ultimo tesoro sepolto da suo padre, l’ultima occasione di trattenerlo, di stare con lui ancora per un poco o per molto o per sempre. La sua ricerca è destinata al fallimento perché il contenuto stesso della ricerca è un vuoto. Il contenuto è una perdita.
Ma attraverso la ricerca Oskar approda al contatto. Il contatto è il rapporto reciproco tra le perdite, il mettere a confronto i dolori e le cicatrici, non per darne una stima e nemmeno per arrivare a una compensazione, ma per raggiungere una consapevolezza, una verità che è quasi una salvezza. E cioè che se la perdita accomuna tutti, allora tutti siamo un po’ perduti e un po’ morti, tutti stiamo cercando qualcosa e la ricerca di tutti è fallimentare. Questa è la vita. Eppure tutti vivono. E allora per vivere dobbiamo raggiungere un compromesso. Dobbiamo stabilire un equilibrio tra ciò che abbiamo perso e ciò che possiamo ottenere o trattenere o salvare dalla perdita. Dobbiamo stringere insieme tutte le cose che amiamo e farne una camicia di becchime.
È un messaggio di speranza? Un messaggio di rassegnazione? Io credo sia un messaggio di umanità, e questa è la cosa più importante di tutte.

Beat the Backlist Challenge: Read the oldest book that’s currently on my TBR.

Just as good as the movie...fantastic audiobook narration....highly recommended.

Narrated by precocious nine-year-old Oskar Schell, this book relates his journey to express grief for his father, who died in the 9-11 attacks on the World Trade Center. After finding a key in his father’s closet, Oskar embarks upon a quest to locate what it opens, symbolically paying tribute to his father's life while also helping him heal. An intertwined story tells of Oskar's grandparents' difficult lives after surviving the bombing of Dresden during World War II. Their stories involve letters written from Oskar’s grandfather to his father and from Oskar’s grandmother to Oskar. Themes include the silence of suffering, the impact of trauma, and how difficult it can be to overcome.

This is another book where I can appreciate its artistry but is not a particularly enjoyable reading experience. I thought Oskar’s story, though it stretches the limits of belief, was touching. I felt compassion for the child who has suddenly lost his father and describes what is obviously depression as “heavy boots.” It hits very close to home for me. However, I found the grandparents’ storylines disjointed and difficult to follow. The chapters narrated by Oskar are the strongest and most direct, though his voice is much more analytical and mature than a typical child. There were many interesting parallels between the experiences of Oskar and his grandfather. The tone is very sad and there are many loose ends.

I think the overall impression of this book is more effective than the individual parts. It would be a good book to read with another person or as part of a book club.