Book: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

by Jonathan Safran Foer

Length: 368

Format: eBook
Price: Downloaded from Overdrive

How I heard about it: It's on my list.

Basic Premise: Nine-year-old Oskar lost his father last year in the 9/11 terrorist attack, but as he is going through his father's closet one day, he discovers an envelope and an unmarked key. Believing them to be part of a last message from his father, Oskar launches a search for his father's last secret.

My Take: 6 out of 10 (scale here)

This story is told mostly from Oskar in a first-person narrative, but there are bits scattered throughout which are told by his grandmother and grandfather, but you don't realize who they are or how their stories connect until later in the book. Although this can often be an effective story-telling tool, I wasn't a fan of that particular approach with this particular story. One of the reasons was that one of the characters was so fundamentally un-likeable. Another was because it tended to complicate things rather than clarify, which was obviously intentional, but it didn't really work for me. However, the primary storyteller, Oskar, was highly entertaining. He has an extremely brilliant mind but lacks certain basic social skills, such as the ability to determine whether something he thinks is appropriate to say out loud. It made for many amusing moments. It also made Oskar incredibly endearing. I also loved how his two favorite adjectives were "extremely" and "incredibly." The story was heartfelt and, although I won't be looking up other books by this author, I did enjoy this one.

List Progress:

1. I Am Malala by Christina Lamb and Malala Yousafzai
2. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
3. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
4. Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher
5. The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
6. A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
7. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
8.  Does My Head Look Big in This? by Randa Abdel-Fattah review here
9. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Timeby Mark Haddon
10. Uglies by Scott Westerfeld (read before I started blogging)
11. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz
12. Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
13. Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson (read before I started blogging)
14. Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
15. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer 
16. Bossypants by Tina Fey
17. Jasper Jones by Craig Silvey
18. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (read before I started blogging)
19. The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd (read before I started blogging)
20. Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen *abandoned*
21. Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell review here
22. She’s Come Undone by Wally Lamb
23. Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling - can we have a moment for whoever created this list? "Harry Potter" is not a book. It's a series of books. Sheesh.
24. Looking for Alaska by John Green review here
25. The Book Thief by Markus Zuzak review here
26. The Kite Runner by Khaled Housseini review here