Where is extremely loud and incredibly close

The search led him to the answers to his questions, meet many interesting people, find a way to heal his wounds and move on with his life. Oskar is intellectually curious, sensitive, pacifist, musically-inclined, earnest. When I was at that age, I had a classmate who died of drowning while she and her family were having a picnic aboard a boat on a Black Saturday. I got sad because that classmate of mine was close to me but I did not have those deep and mind-blowing thoughts that Foer made for Oskar.

I also thought that his thinking is sometimes vague, too mature and not childish at all. Yes, there is an on-going production of this and you will see the output on December 25, at your favorite U. In my opinion, its melodrama borders between manipulative and sincere. However, I think that reading this in and not in when the book was first published is better because many of the families and friends of those who perished have already moved on with their lives.

That despite the pain and much more the good memories that their loved ones left behind with them. Those will never ever go away. Guaranteed to blow you away especially if you are used to reading linear narrative and straightforward and precise storytelling.

I thought that the back stories were all pieces of thoughts that the boy or the father had so I just read them on strides. I did not know that those will be part of the grand scheme in the end. These little things could catch you unguarded and I thought that it was cleverly done: to turn a simple predictable a bit hallow story into an unbelievably and surprisingly memorable read. My favorite part is when the father said in the telephone: "Are you there? Are you there?

Is anyone there? A father always think of his child's life or safety first before his own. My first time to read a Foer and I am just blown away. View all 20 comments. Mar 28, Dan Schwent rated it liked it Shelves: Nine year old Oskar Schell finds a key among his dead father's things and embarks on a quest to find the lock it fits. Will Oskar Schell's quest give him the answers he's looking for? Quite some time ago, I watched a fragment of the movie based on this book on a rainy day before deciding I wanted to read the book.

Now that I've read it, I'm not sure it was the right choice. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is the story of Oskar Schell, a nine year old possible genius with issues whose father di Nine year old Oskar Schell finds a key among his dead father's things and embarks on a quest to find the lock it fits.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is the story of Oskar Schell, a nine year old possible genius with issues whose father died in the World Trade Center collapse. After discovering a mysterious key, he wanders New York's five boroughs, meeting people and drawing closer to the end of his quest. I loved the Oskar Schell character, a smart boy who has trouble fitting in, and I loved the idea of a boy on quest.

Oskar's relationship with his deceased father was very well done, as was his anger with his mother. However, I found the book to be on the gimmicky side with all the photographs and typographical razzmatazz. Also, I found the elder Thomas Schell to be an unsympathetic character. He ran out on his family. Why is Foer so bent on making us feel sorry for him? The ending denied the book an entire star for me.

Even so, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close was not without its charm. It was an engaging read and had some poignant moments. Three out of five stars. View all 16 comments. Extremely beautiful and incredibly lachrymose. View all 45 comments. Jul 06, Meredith Holley rated it it was amazing Recommends it for: those who haven't read History of Love.

Recommended to Meredith by: This guy Eric? Shelves: classic-or-cannonical , reviewed , favorites , influenced-me. Maybe it goes without saying that we write differently in letters than we do in email or text. Something about putting pen to paper makes a handwritten letter more intimate and less imposing than electronic media.

We take off the tin-foil hat. Our mistakes are not made invisible by a backspace key, but crossed out with our own hand. We reveal ourselves.

And letters to people we love are that much more intimate and revealing, even sentimental. We create something, a product, that you can hold in Maybe it goes without saying that we write differently in letters than we do in email or text.

We create something, a product, that you can hold in your hand, and then send it off, like a little piece of ourselves. What is love without death? And sometimes both are too harsh to look in the face. I have to make a nothing place for them. Traditional wedding vows summarize pretty economically that classic feeling of being in love. I will love you in sickness and health, for richer or poorer, till death do us part. I love you as an old man, as an old woman. I love you in the health of family and in the sickness of grief.

This love letter takes place just after the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center, and it gives me the feeling of Foer sewing up the wounds of the city. I lived in New York a couple of years before the September 11th attack, and I hated the city. When the attacks happened, I lived in one of the religiously fanatical far-away places where a lot of people felt, secretly or openly, that New York deserved to have a symbol of its decadence cut down.

I lived in Oregon. I love where I live, and I feel that same kind of love and care in Foer talking about where he lives. I think it is beautiful. I think that it is not possible for a place that could be so beloved, no matter how much I dislike it myself, to have deserved bombing. I would say the same about Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Dresden, and Hiroshima.

They are both, to some extent, about the injustices of growing up, but Krauss takes the tone of overcoming adversity, where I think Foer takes the tone of reconciliation and healing.

Maybe they both have all of those elements. Some of the similarities are in the family phrasings, some are in the plots. You can see how they are very different writers who suffer from the disadvantage of living in the same house with another great writer. Extremely Loud is American folklore. Not that regionalism is necessarily a turn-off, but we want to read about ourselves. Cultures that are familiar but foreign can be suspicious.

But also, we both were. We both are Americans, despite our foreignness. It is one of those muddles that political boundaries make out of culture. We are foreigners and family at the same time. In fact, all of this, everything in this book, is more figurative and sentimental than many readers care for, but what do you expect from a love letter?

View all 52 comments. Jan 05, Whitney Atkinson rated it it was amazing Shelves: read-in One of the most beautifully written and impactful stories ive read. Aug 24, Lucy rated it it was amazing Recommends it for: open-minded readers who don't mind the unconventional. Shelves: favorites. 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?

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 wo 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. 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. I told her, "Dad didn't have a spirit! He had cells!

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 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 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. You kind of forget 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. View all 9 comments. One of the most wonderful and thought provoking legacy of books that I've read. Events come to pass in which he finds a key, a key that sets hi off on an investigation all over New York, with the aid of several other individuals that cross his path, seeking answers about himself and his trauma.

There is also another story being told at the same time, using letters from Oskar's grandfa One of the most wonderful and thought provoking legacy of books that I've read. There is also another story being told at the same time, using letters from Oskar's grandfather and grandmother to his father. It all ties in nicely, and is a pretty ingenious way for showing the reader how trauma can be worked through. Feb 11, Alex added it Shelves: currently-reading-might-finish.

Perhaps I'm just stupid, but I don't get this book, nor am I really crazy about it. It's a little too hip for me, in the sense that I don't think anybody really gets what the hell Foer is trying to say, but because it's obscure everyone likes it.

Or maybe I'm just looking too much into the book. But I found myself having to read and re-read pages over and over again to make sense of it all. It doesn't do it for me, but I might try to get through it one last time, mainly because I feel very guilty Perhaps I'm just stupid, but I don't get this book, nor am I really crazy about it.

It doesn't do it for me, but I might try to get through it one last time, mainly because I feel very guilty if I don't finish a book, despite how bad as I think it is.

View all 14 comments. Feb 08, Calista rated it really liked it Shelves: genre-coming-of-age , genre-fantasy , genre-mystery , , histiorical , bage-young-adult , genre-drama-tragedy , award-various.

I really enjoyed this movie. It was well done and touching, so I picked up the book. It is a powerful story told, but I think this is an instance the movie is better than the book. I didn't like the narration of the grandmother and grandfather running throughout the book.

I felt the point of view worthy of our time was o Oskar Schell. I wanted the other parts to hurry up and be over. It was strange and didn't seem to have that much import on the story really. I did like the book. There were some I really enjoyed this movie. There were some touching parts and there were some funny parts and there were uncomfortable parts.

Oskar is 9 years old and he wants to kiss this 40 year old woman. I do like the idea of this little kid connecting all these different people with a last name of black.

Many of them were very lonely and he was able to make them feel not so lonely. I like that idea. The destruction of the Twin towers is part of the plot in this novel. He goes into thinking what could have happened to those people and he discusses footage that the news did not show of people jumping out of the windows.

It is fairly intense. Oskar lost his dad in the attack. It is a unique little story and I'm glad I read this. It took me a while to finish it, but I'm glad I did. I went back and forth on how many stars. I could give it 3 stars and I could give it 4 stars so I went with this is unique and not like much else out there, so I gave it 4 stars.

View all 5 comments. Shelves: reviewed , favs-recent , dark , wit , , war , lit-usa , wacko-realistic-fiction. According to E. Wilson 'No two persons ever read the same book. The stream of consciousness writing style is the perfect choice. Then aga According to E. He loses the most wonderful father during yet somehow remains himself.

A survivor that emerges wounded but not shattered, perhaps by choosing to transfer all that bottled up love for his lost father to others. I like to imagine could have spawned an Oskar. Sep 20, Violet wells rated it liked it Shelves: contemporary-american-fiction , new-york , 21st-century. There are quite a few novels that you either love or hate.

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How did you buy your ticket? Director Stephen Daldry. Eric Roth screenplay Jonathan Safran Foer novel. Top credits Director Stephen Daldry. See more at IMDbPro. Trailer Promo Dutch Trailer. Spanish Trailer. German Trailer. French Trailer. Swedish Trailer. UK Trailer. Photos Top cast Edit. Dennis Hearn Minister as Minister.

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