A Review of Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is a fictional novel published by First Mariner Books, and written by Jonathan Safran Foer, the American author of Everything Is Illuminated. It is the heartfelt journey of Oskar Schell, a ten year old boy whose world collapses parallel to the loss of his father in one of the towers of 9/11. Accompanied by his imagination, Oskar sets out on a search through the five boroughs of New York, lead by a key he found in a vase which belonged to his father. Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close also tells the story of Oskar Schell’s grandparents who survived the 1945 Dresden bombings of World War II. Foer’s novel is fueled by tragedy and loss. As his readers unfold the life stories of the Schell’s, piece by piece, we feel the ache of their loss and endure the torture page by page while they search for answers that do not exist.

Foer’s story reads like a puzzle as it switches from the different segments of one character’s story to another. It challenges the traditional reader to stray from the norm and take in his work, not with their own imagination, but alongside the lives of the characters in his novel as the story is being told. It is remarkable how this puzzle comes together in its closing stages.

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is complimented, yet interrupted, by black-and-white pictures, color images, and even blank pages. The illustrations and layout of Foer’s novel forcefully immerses its reader into the lives of his characters, sometimes annoyingly, but interestingly just the same. I find them appropriate for bringing the reader into the mind of someone who is besieged by their suffering. Just as his characters search for hope, and closure, his readers may find they are doing the exact same thing. The novel is crafted in such a way that it makes its reader eager and impatient to reveal the story in its entirety in order to make sense of the torture he puts his readers and characters through.

The curious technique of Foer’s writing will repel the unwilling, traditional reader. His imagination is at full capacity as he constructs each character introduced in this story in an extraordinary and distinct fashion. Oskar, for example, is an “inventor, jewelry designer, jewelry fabricator, amateur entomologist, Francophile, vegan, origamist, pacifist, percussionist, amateur astronomer, computer consultant, amateur archeologist, collector of rare coins, butterflies that died natural deaths, miniature cacti, Beatles memorabilia, semiprecious stones, and other things.” Oskar’s character has an old soul. He knows more than he wishes he did, and feels the weight of the world on him, which gives him “heavy boots.” Oskar is the inventor of things that may aid his escape from the fears that developed from the “stuff” that happened to him, which he documents, particularly the events of the “worst day,” which are the driving forces of his journey.

I appreciate how Foer developed his characters so attentively. Oskar, for example, has been wearing only white since the death of his father, a true Francophile, as Oskar claims to be, would know that only someone in the deepest of mourning would wear white, not black, which is a detail that Foer did not neglect. It is known as “deuil blanc” or “white mourning” and it was a custom among the Queens of France from medieval times even into the 1930’s.

At first glance, Foer’s work may seem annoyingly clever, but if you look deeper you can see the care he took in developing his characters, they are neither odd by accident, or for the sake of being odd. In the eyes of someone like Foer’s character Oskar Schell, the people he encounters on his journey are distinct because he is curious and sees more than what is at face value. He is searching, and attending to the most obscure details. The characters are meant to be peculiar to Oskar, and therefore to the reader, not the other way around. The beauty of Foer’s writing is in the intricacy of these details.

Foer accomplishes the task of exposing his readers to tragedy, the kind of tragedy that seems so senseless that bereavement seems impossible; it exemplifies how people mourn loss, the debilitating capabilities of mourning a death, how it affects relationships, and how a person perceives the world around them while they are mourning. Those who have lost someone in an unnatural way may have a greater respect for what Foer accomplishes with this novel. How he connects the multiple story lines in this novel with shared grief, sorrow, and guilt between the generations gives it more broad appeal to a diverse range of readers. He accomplishes this task with Oskar. The innocence of a child is one that is impossible to ignore. Loss from the perspective of a child allows the reader to make a deeper connection with Grandpa’s dilemma, and makes his suffering less distant. People are often able to look deeper into the heart of a child than they do when viewing the pain of an adult, and their expectations for how adults deal with pain is often different than what they expect of a child. Oskar’s character allows the reader to abandon their expectations and feel real sympathy for the other characters of the story.

His story is dark enough to be real, and humorous enough to fall in love with.Regardless of a readers experience with loss or death, his efforts demand respect for his ability to craft a well-written story whether it is read in spite of his unconventional methods, or in appreciation of them. Reading Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is worth the challenges it presents for its reader.