The journey of a nine-year-old to make heads or tails of the worst day (9/11)
Written: Nov 16 '05
Product Rating:
Pros: Character development was good
Cons: Too many distractions took me out of the book, away from the story
The Bottom Line: As much as I enjoyed parts of the book, and wanted to like the rest, the writing style and visual gimmicks just took me away from the story.
dramastef's Full Review: Jonathan Safran Foer - Extremely Loud & Incredibly...
I really wanted to like it. I tried to like it. Parts of me felt like I should like it. Parts of me liked parts of it. But taken on the whole, all of me didn’t really like Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.
I didn't ask who the man in the drawings was, because I was afraid the answer would give me heavy boots. You wouldn't draw someone that much unless you loved him and missed him.
Nine-year-old Oskar Schell has plenty of reasons to have heavy boots these days. His father was killed on September 11, 2001 and Oskar is trying to make sense of things. His mother is trying to get on with her life, and he doesn’t understand that. His grandmother, who has heavy boots of her own to wear, spends her days talking to a renter Oskar has never seen, and he doesn’t understand that. Before the worst day, Oskar and his father used to play games. They would read the New York Times and highlight all the grammar mistakes. They would have magnificent scavenger hunts, some over in an hour, others stretching out over days or weeks. On the worst day, Oskar and his father had been in the middle of a scavenger hunt, and now Oskar was left trying to piece together the answer by himself.
I ran home and did some more research, and I found 472 people with the name Black in New York… That was my great plan. I would spend my Saturdays and Sundays finding all of the people named Black and learning what they knew about the key in the vase in Dad’s closet.
And that’s mostly what Oskar does. His parts of the book follow him around throughout New York City as he tries to figure out what the key he now wears around his neck means. But, as is often the case, it isn’t the destination that is as important or memorable as the journey itself, and the people he meets along the way.
Also found in the novel are letters written by Oskar’s mostly-absent grandfather. Letters to his father, letters to Oskar. There are also letters from Oskar’s grandmother. There are excerpts from the grandfather’s daybooks. He lost his speech years ago, and now only speaks through what he writes in his day book. On top of that, there are often streams-of-consciousness passages from any and all of the characters. None of these changes in perspective would be a problem, except for the fact that there are never any headings, any warnings, any precursors to the changes. Because of the tendency to never separate conversation passages in the traditional way, I often had to skip back a paragraph or two to figure out whose perspective I was reading, which took me out of the book, out of the story, and just plain annoyed me.
Finally, I found the pictures of the falling body.
Was it Dad?
Maybe.
Whoever it was, it was somebody.
I ripped the pages out of the book.
I reversed the order, so the last one was first, and the first one was last.
When I flipped through them, it looked like the man was floating up through the sky.
And if I’d had more pictures, he would’ve flown through a window, back into the building, and the smoke would’ve poured into the hole that the plane was about to come out of.
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close makes much use of visual art to try and punctuate the written words. Some of the letters are marked with red ink to show the mistakes (yes, the boy asked me why I’d marked a library book, when he looked over my shoulder once at one of these parts). There are numerous pictures. Some purported to have been taken by Oskar, others to simply illustrate a point. There are pages from Oskar’s grandfather’s daybooks, with only one word, or one sentence in the middle of the page. There is a section where his daybook isn’t large enough, and all of the words begin running together, as he runs out of room to write, until we are left with one big, black, illegible blob.
I’ve seen these tactics used in moderation with much success. But in this case, like the abrupt changes in perspective, the visual art simply took me out of the book, out of the story and ended up just annoying me.
As I said before, I really wanted to like this book. It had moments of hilarity, moments of genius. But in the end, too many distractions, too much pretension, and I just can’t recommend it.
Oskar Schell is an inventor, Francophile, tambourine player, Shakespearean actor, jeweler, pacifist. He is nine years old. And he is on an urgent, sec...More at HotBookSale
Oskar Schell is an inventor, Francophile, tambourine player, Shakespearean actor, jeweler, pacifist. He is nine years old. And he is on an urgent, sec...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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