Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel

Jonathan Safran Foer knows how to tell a story with multi-layered yet tightly interwoven plots, perspectives, and meanings. His latest novel focuses on Oskar, a nine-year old boy trying to cope with the death of his father, a victim of the 9/11 terrorist attack of the World Trade Center, and it includes letters from his grandparents who lost everything in the bombing of Dresden during WWII (a subtle and noncomparative reminder that our tragedy is not the only tragedy of the world). But really, the novel is about love and life: how necessary and impossible it is to communicate with those we love most and how "life is scarier than death."

Understanding truth in things we believe and don't believe, know and don't know. Learning to trust those closest to us. Asking for small forgivenesses that feel like the weight of the world lifting away. Dreaming of life in reverse.

Oskar's grandfather writes to the son he ran away from about Oskar's grandmother: "...she wants to know if I love her, that's all anyone wants from anyone else, not love itself but the knowledge that love is there, like new batteries in the flashlight in the emergency kit in the hall closet." Damn, that part about the knowledge of love is so true it makes my teeth hurt. That's "all" I want, really.

And then there are the all the things we try to tell each other about ourselves, the sense and the nonsense, the lies and the truth. How does anyone tell her story to anyone else so that it matters? How does anyone understand me or you or Manuel Escobar? Oskar's wise old neighbor sums the significant people of the world up in just one word, usually war or money, and he explains: "You could write a book about Manuel Escobar! And that would leave things out, too! You could write ten books! You could never stop writing!" Words seem so inadequate when we need them most, and yet they are all we have.

I also love this book because I identify with Oskar. He says his mind works they way beavers build dams -- not because they want to build dams but because if they stopped chopping wood their teeth would grow into their brains and kill them. Strangely, I understand that feeling.

And when he tell his mom he feels sick about everything, he can't stop listing things: "poor people who get fat because they eat junk food because it's cheaper... domesticated animals, how I have a domesticated animal, nightmares, Microsoft Windows, old people who sit around all day... secrets, dial phones... Grandma's coupons, storage facilities, people who don't know what the internet is, bad handwriting..."

Most of his inventions are ridiculous and naive, because he is only nine, but again, I've had similar thoughts myself. For example, he wishes there was some way to make your skin change according to your mood. "Everyone could know what everyone else felt, and we could be more careful with each other." Wouldn't that make life easier? I'm not sure about everyday, but I've always said I wish I would turn bright green when I've had too much to drink so people know it's my alter ego and not really me acting stupid. That's a damn good idea.

It's also a good idea for you to read this book for yourself.