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Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel
by Jonathan Safran Foer

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel Cover

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Awards

The Rooster 2006 Morning News Tournament of Books Nominee

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Powells.com Staff Pick

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is one of those novels you'll be sorry to see end. Inventor, jewelry designer, Francophile, tambourine player, and pacifist, nine-year-old Oskar careens from Central Park to Coney Island searching for a lock to fit the mysterious key left by his now deceased father. Oskar is endearing and imaginative; his voice captivates from the first page to the last. He tends to attract a motley crew of characters all groping for catharsis amidst various degrees of loss. Again, Foer tackles the big questions of love, truth, and beauty with a flare rare amongst contemporary writers.
Recommended by Steven, Powell's City of Books

I absolutely loved Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close a most precious and delightful novel by Jonathan Safran Foer. Oskar Schell made me laugh, smile, and just feel good. He is a charmer who's won my heart through the tears and the joy.
Recommended by Adrienne, Powells.com

Review-a-Day   (What is Review-a-Day?)

"Everything Is Illuminated was a wonderful debut novel, funny and touching, it was also awkward and clunky the way first attempts often are....Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is, by contrast, the result of a more mature and even pen. Even Foer's flashier tricks, rather than overwhelming the story, serve to heighten the emotionality. It seems clear at this point that Foer has successfully graduated from being a one-off wunderkind to an accomplished and graceful writer. What he has given us is not just a remarkably clever work, but the 9/11 story we need, even if we didn't know it." Priya Jain, Salon.com (read the entire Salon.com review)

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

Oskar Schell is an inventor, Francophile, tambourine player, Shakespearean actor, jeweler, pacifist. He is nine years old. And he is on an urgent, secret search through the five boroughs of New York to find the lock that fits a mysterious key belonging to his father, who died in the attacks on the World Trade Center.

An inspired creation, Oskar is endearing, exasperating and unforgettable. His search for the lock careens from Central Park to Coney Island to the Bronx and beyond. But it also travels into history, to Dresden and Hiroshima, where horrific bombings once shattered other lives. Along the way, Oskar encounters a motley assortment of humanity — a 103-year-old war reporter, a tour guide who never leaves the Empire State Building, lovers enraptured or scorned — all survivors in their own ways.

Ultimately, Oskar ends his journey where it began, at his father's grave. But now he is accompanied by the silent stranger who has been renting the spare room of his grandmother's apartment. They are there to dig up his father's empty coffin.

Rarely does a writer as young as Jonathan Foer display such virtuosity and wisdom. "His prose is clever, challenging, willfully constructed to make you read it again and again," said Marie Arana, in the Washington Post Book World, of Everything Is Illuminated. Once again Foer turns his capacious talent and vision to devastating events and finds solice in that most human quality, imagination. Extemely Loud and Incredibly Close boldly approaches history and tragedy with humor, tenderness and awe.

Review:

"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 navely 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. Agent, Nicole Aragi. 11-city author tour; foreign rights sold in 12 countries. (Apr. 4)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Review:

"[B]eautifully designed second from the gifted young author....[A] riveting narrative....[A] brilliant fiction works thrilling variations on, and consolations for, its plangent message: that 'in the end, everyone loses everyone.' Yes, but look what Foer has found." Kirkus Reviews

Review:

"While it contains moments of shattering emotion and stunning virtuosity that attest to Mr. Foer's myriad gifts as a writer, the novel as a whole feels simultaneously contrived and improvisatory, schematic and haphazard." Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times Book Review

Synopsis:

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. What he discovers is solace in that most human quality, imagination.
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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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What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating based on 2 comments:
Rhiannista, April 1, 2008 (view all comments by Rhiannista)
I hated this book! Oskar is a weird and unrealistic character. I found most aspects of the story unlikely and unrealistic.
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chicskter8932, August 29, 2006 (view all comments by chicskter8932)
Not only did this novel send chills up my spine, it brought tears to my eyes. It keeps the reader in suspence as to what the key it to, and if it indeed had a connection to Oskars father, Thomas Schell. The pictures included in this novel help the reader understand Oskars point of view as a child and makes you read more into the novel. It makes you wonder, where did this key come from? Did it have a connection to his father? It was an amazing book and i recommend it to anyone who likes to read about real fictional stories. The ending flip book def. brought tears to my eyes and made me wonder, what if we could make the world rewind? Would we not have had 9/11 or any wars in that case? Would our soldiers be at home living with they're families? Thank you for such a wonderful novel Mr. Foer!!
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Product Details

ISBN:
9780618329700
Author:
Foer, Jonathan Safran
Publisher:
Houghton Mifflin Company
Location:
Boston
Subject:
Literary
Copyright:
2005
Edition Number:
1st
Edition Description:
HARDCOVER
Publication Date:
April 4, 2005
Binding:
Hardcover
Grade Level:
General/trade
Language:
English
Illustrations:
Y
Pages:
326
Dimensions:
9.50x6.34x1.22 in. 1.42 lbs.
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