Not another 9/11 story....

9/11. We will always remember where we were and what we were doing on that tragic day. “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” is not about 9/11. It is about loss, grief, and closure. It is about a young boy’s quest to put the death of his father behind, and once again find safety in his world. It is a story that exposes the raw layers of seemingly dysfunctional family. It will make you laugh, and make you cry.
The story centers around 9-year old Oskar Schell, who lost his father on 9/11. Oskar is a peculiar child. He only wears white, writes countless letters to famous people, plays the tambourine endlessly, gives himself bruises when he is sad, and for most of the book, wanders around New York City by himself. Oskar finds a key in a vase hidden in his father’s closet. The key is in an envelope marked “BLACK”. Oskar believes that the key can hold answers to the questions that he has about the death of his father. Systematically, Oskar goes on a quest to visit everyone in NYC with the last name of black. Along the way he meets some very interesting people, who are going through their own struggles. Foer weaves the story of Oskar’s quest with the story of Grandparents who were refugees from Germany, having been displaced after the bombing of Dresden.
The story of the Grandparents is a novel in itself. They meet in their youth, as the Grandfather is in love with Grandma’s sister. The sister is pregnant by Grandpa. Sadly, she is killed. This is devastating to both Grandpa and Grandma. They both come to America, where Grandpa loses his ability to speak. They marry, and start their lives together. They are both fragile and mentally tortured by the grief that they share. The grief is what binds them. Reading Foer’s account of their lives is like looking into an insane asylum! Grandpa finally leaves when Grandma gets pregnant with Oskar’s father. Grandpa’s life is a constant stream of letters that he did not send, and things that he did not say. Grandpa returns when he hears of his son’s death.
Foer does a brilliant job of building the characters, at least some of them. I found myself really hating Oskar’s mother for most of the book. Foer leads us to believe that she lets Oskar roam the city as he wants. This seemed like a contradiction, since she did not allow Oskar to watch television. What kind of mother would let her child wander NYC, but yet not allow him SpongeBob? Although it confused me, it did make me want to keep reading in order to find out more about the Mother. Foer poignantly tells of Oskar receiving the last messages from his father on the home answering machine. Oskar hides the machine in order to spare his mother the grief, and to keep those last words for himself. Very touching. The curious part is when Oskar goes out and buys and identical machine so his mother won’t know. What? The first of several things that I found unbelievable.
Foer leaves a lot of questions unresolved, or vaguely answered. For example, we never really get an explanation of why the Grandpa quit talking. Was he suffering post-traumatic stress? Maybe he was mentally ill? We got a vague explanation as to why Oskar would only wear white, but the reader was left to glean that out of a chapter dealing with Hiroshima. When Oskar is sad, he frequently says that he has “heavy boots”. Again we never really get an adequate explanation. Foer’s imagery is great, but leaves too much up to the reader. He leaves the mother’s character on the outskirts of the most of the story. At the end of the book, he reveals that the mother knew what Oskar was up to all along. Too little, too late.
One of the most interesting aspects of the book is Foer’s use of images. He uses pictures of 9/11, images of letters erratically written by Grandpa, and what seem to be random pictures of things in Oskar’s life. They make for a flashy presentation, but I feel they didn’t add a lot of substance to the book. I would have rather seen Foer take more effort with the storyline and the character development.
As for using the 9/11 backdrop, I am torn. I think that the story could have been written with any tragic loss as the backdrop. Oskar could have just as easily lost his father in a car accident. I know how tragic 9/11 was for Americans. I am sure that as a New Yorker Foer was deeply affected by it. I may be a bit cynical, but I can’t help but think that Foer was perhaps a bit opportunistic. Tragedy sells books. Even though Foer only uses the tragedy as a backdrop, he still uses it. I don’t feel that Foer is exploiting the victims of 9/11, but I do feel that he is teetering on the exploitation of his reader’s emotions.
At the end of the day, one must take this book for face value. It is a good read, but it could have been a great one.