Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Jonathan Safran Foer has written a novel for our times, a story so deeply affecting and wise that it has to potential to have an impact far beyond that of most novels. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is a collage about the world we live in: its terrorism, its beauty, its love, its mysteries, its absurdities, its people. Oskar is a precocious nine-year old who writes letters to famously intelligent people asking to be their protégé, invents a "googolplex" of devices (such as an ambulance that tells people when a loved one is inside and a lollipop that tells people how they are feeling), who knows a tremendous amount of facts (many of which he wishes he didn't know) - and who has lost his beloved father in the World Trade Center bombings. Oskar harbors a secret about that day that he cannot bring to share with anyone, not even his mother or grandmother. When he discovers a strange key among his father's possessions, he sets out in the five boroughs of New York to see what it unlocks. His narrative is punctuated by that of his grandfather, a man left speechless by what he experienced during the bombing of Dresden, and his grandmother, also a survivor of the Dresden firebombing, who loves Oskar in ways his mother cannot and who tries to make sense of why her husband left her before the birth of their son. The relationships are complex and heartfelt, and are marked by an affection that will make readers laugh from the pleasure of them. Just when you think Foer can't get any deeper with his insights, he does.

Foer embraces postmodernism by including stock photographs that don't have a depth of meaning until the text gives it to them, as well as letters, email, handwritten notes, and a numerical conversation between Oskar's grandparents. This is not cold postmodernism, though; the artifacts contained here illustrate the depth of Oskar's longing and the complexity of the world we live in. Many will make readers smile as they make the connections to Oskar's "story of my life." At first this novel reminded me somewhat of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, but it quickly plunges into something much more multifaceted and universal: it ultimately is about surviving love. Its quirky humor - how can a novel about the WTC tragedy be so funny? - makes even the most difficult moments easier to read.

Everyone should read this novel. You will not emerge unchanged. This novel will be known as the quintessential 9/11 novel, the one that will forever categorize all that the tragedy unleashed in America.