Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close 2005)

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Several months ago I was privileged to see a young man perform a cutting from this book for a Forensic competition and I was deeply moved. Curious, I decided to get the book from the library and read it as my way of participating in the memorials for the ten year anniversary of 9/11.

Nine-year-old Oskar Schell, a precocious amateur physicist, is trying to uncover clues about his father's death on September 11.

Emotionally, I found it incredibly difficult to read. This is a book you experience. You truly must enter the world created by the author. On reflection I wonder how it could possibly be recorded since so much of the extra material in the book is visual. But there it is in Amazon available on CD and issued by Recorded Books, who I have trusted in the past. Still I think this book has to be read.

One thing I loved was the scattering of the phrases 'extremely loud' and 'incredibly close' throughout the story.

There were moments that touched me. There were moments of love. There were moments of confusion. There were moments of depression. There were moments of horror. And there were moments of hope and humanity. More than anything there is a reminder that perhaps we put too much faith in a future that can disappear in an instant.



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