From Publishers Weekly
Oskar Schell, hero of this brilliant follow-up to Foer's bestselling
Everything Is Illuminated,
is a nine-year-old amateur inventor, jewelry designer, astrophysicist,
tambourine player and pacifist. Like the second-language narrator of
Illuminated,
Oskar turns his naïvely precocious vocabulary to the understanding of
historical tragedy, as he searches New York for the lock that matches a
mysterious key left by his father when he was killed in the September
11 attacks, a quest that intertwines with the story of his
grandparents, whose lives were blighted by the firebombing of Dresden.
Foer embellishes the narrative with evocative graphics, including
photographs, colored highlights and passages of illegibly overwritten
text, and takes his unique flair for the poetry of miscommunication to
occasionally gimmicky lengths, like a two-page soliloquy written
entirely in numerical code. Although not quite the comic tour de force
that
Illuminated was, the novel is replete with hilarious and
appalling passages, as when, during show-and-tell, Oskar plays a
harrowing recording by a Hiroshima survivor and then launches into a
Poindexterish disquisition on the bomb's "charring effect." It's more
of a challenge to play in the same way with the very recent collapse of
the towers, but Foer gambles on the power of his protagonist's voice to
transform the cataclysm from raw current event to a tragedy at once
visceral and mythical. Unafraid to show his traumatized characters'
constant groping for emotional catharsis, Foer demonstrates once again
that he is one of the few contemporary writers willing to risk
sentimentalism in order to address great questions of truth, love and
beauty.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From School Library Journal Adult/High
School-Oskar Schell is not your average nine-year-old. A budding
inventor, he spends his time imagining wonderful creations. He also
collects random photographs for his scrapbook and sends letters to
scientists. When his father dies in the World Trade Center collapse,
Oskar shifts his boundless energy to a quest for answers. He finds a
key hidden in his father's things that doesn't fit any lock in their
New York City apartment; its container is labeled "Black." Using
flawless kid logic, Oskar sets out to speak to everyone in New York
City with the last name of Black. A retired journalist who keeps a card
catalog with entries for everyone he's ever met is just one of the
colorful characters the boy meets. As in
Everything Is Illuminated (Houghton, 2002), Foer takes a dark subject and works in offbeat humor with puns and wordplay. But
Extremely Loud
pushes further with the inclusion of photographs, illustrations, and
mild experiments in typography reminiscent of Kurt Vonnegut's
Breakfast of Champions
(Dell, 1973). The humor works as a deceptive, glitzy cover for a fairly
serious tale about loss and recovery. For balance, Foer includes the
subplot of Oskar's grandfather, who survived the World War II bombing
of Dresden. Although this story is not quite as evocative as Oskar's,
it does carry forward and connect firmly to the rest of the novel. The
two stories finally intersect in a powerful conclusion that will make
even the most jaded hearts fall.
-Matthew L. Moffett, Northern Virginia Community College, Annandale Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Bookmarks Magazine
After his spellbinding first novel
Everything is Illuminated (***1/2 Summer 2002), Jonathan Safran Foer seems "trapped in [
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close] by the very tics that made his first one a success" (
Chicago Sun Times).
The plot structure—quirky boy embarking on a quest for information
about a loved one—mirrors that of his debut. And while Foer still
displays a "seemingly inexhaustible supply of verbal ingenuity," this
time around there is an uneasy balance between the prose and the
subject matter (
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel). This is, after all,
a book about tragedy and loss. Some see Oskar’s oddball evasion of his
emotions as affecting and heartbreaking; others see it as evasive and,
what’s worse, manipulative. Maybe the wounds of 9/11 are still too
fresh.
Technical issues are more cut and dried. Oskar’s voice, for
all of its precocity, overall fails to draw the reader in. Instead of
portraying the world through Oskar’s eyes, Foer spins the reader around
in the boy’s head, a claustrophobic world of lists and fears. The
inclusion of photos makes the dearth of visual writing that much more
glaring. This flatness extends to other characters as well. This can be
forgiven in a book with such a large cast (there are 262 Blacks in the
New York City phone book). But many grumble that the caricatures
include two main characters, the Schell grandparents.
It is easy
to aim critics’ complaints about Oskar’s precocity at Foer himself; all
recognize this young author’s great talent. Many admire Foer’s reach
for something grand, even as they acknowledge that he hasn’t fully
accomplished his task in this novel. Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.
From Booklist
This follow-up to Foer's extremely good and incredibly successful Everything Is Illuminated
(2002) stars one Oskar Schell, a nine-year-old amateur inventor and
Shakespearean actor. But Oskar's boots, as he likes to say, are very
heavy--his father, whom he worshiped, perished in the World Trade
Center on 9/11. In his dad's closet a year later, Oskar finds a key in
a vase mysteriously labeled "Black." So he goes searching after the
lock it opens, visiting (alphabetically) everyone listed in the phone
book with the surname Black. Oskar, who's a cross between The Tin Drum's Oskar Matzerath and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time's
Christopher Boone, doesn't always sound like he's nine, but his
first-person narration of his journey is arrestingly beautiful, and
readers won't soon forget him. A subplot about Oskar's mute
grandfather, who survived the bombing of Dresden, isn't as compelling
as Oskar's quest for the lock, but when the stories finally come
together, the result is an emotionally devastating climax. No spoilers
here, but we will say that the book--which includes a number of
photographs and some eccentric typography--ends with what is
undoubtedly the most beautiful and heartbreaking flip book in all of
literature. REVWR
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Product Description
Jonathan
Safran Foer emerged as one of the most original writers of his
generation with his best-selling debut novel, Everything Is
Illuminated. Now, with humor, tenderness, and awe, he confronts the
traumas of our recent history.
Nine-year-old Oskar Schell has
embarked on an urgent, secret mission that will take him through the
five boroughs of New York. His goal is to find the lock that matches a
mysterious key that belonged to his father, who died in the World Trade
Center on the morning of September 11. This seemingly impossible task
will bring Oskar into contact with survivors of all sorts on an
exhilarating, affecting, often hilarious, and ultimately healing
journey.
About the Author
Jonathan Safran
Foer is the author of the bestseller Everything Is Illuminated, named
Book of the Year by the Los Angeles Times and the winner of numerous
awards, including the Guardian First Book Prize, the National Jewish
Book Award, and the New York Public Library Young Lions Prize. Foer was
one of Rolling Stone’s “People of the Year” and Esquire’s “Best and
Brightest.” Foreign rights to his new novel have already been sold in
ten countries. The film of Everything Is Illuminated, directed by Liev
Schreiber and starring Elijah Wood, will be released in August 2005.
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close has been optioned for film by Scott
Rudin Productions in conjunction with Warner Brothers and Paramount
Pictures. Foer lives in Brooklyn, New York.
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