Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

  Trade Paperback, Mariner Books, ISBN-13/EAN: 9780618711659

     Several years ago my book group discussed Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. This is a rather unusual book in more than one way, but I found it positively fascinating. The narrator and main character of the story is a nine-year-old boy named Oskar who lost his father when the twin towers of the World Trade Center were destroyed in 2001. Oskar is a very intelligent boy who still misses his father very much and has developed many mechanisms to cope with his feelings.
     One day Oskar finds a key which belonged to his father and sets out on a search throughout all New York City to find which lock this key opens. While on this mission he happens upon assorted characters throughout the city and creates inventions at the drop of a hat. Oskar's mother seems to have a minimal presence in his life; his grandmother lives across the street, communicating via walkie talkie.
     The main themes dealt with in this book are death, loss, and emotional trauma and, obviously, Oskar's emotional trauma and loss are the death of his father. But there is a parallel story in this book that includes the grandmother, too. I cannot give that away here, but it is equally as emotional as Oskar's story and worth a read, too. It is advantageous to know there are two stories, each in its own time period, prior to reading this book, otherwise it can be seen as a  labyrinth!
     Jonathan Safran Foer employs a recurrent literary technique in this book by using many images. His writing is a great example of visual writing, and he brings this visual dimension to the book by using different fonts/typesettings and more space plus the images. This is an attempt to immerse the reader into the story, if not the characters themselves. Some readers in the book group found this style somewhat puzzling at first, but after learning how it worked finished the book without problem.