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