Visit the world of Oskar Schell, and you will find yourself seeing things through eyes of imaginative wonder and kaleidoscopic confusion. Foer wastes no time in putting us in the shoes of his protagonist, this young boy trying to understand the final moments that his father experienced high up in one of the Twin Towers, on September 11. Later, after finding a key his father left behind, Oskar goes on a months-long treasure hunt through the boroughs of New York City, hoping to discover the truth of his family's past.
Oskar is one of the more memorable characters in recent fiction. Indeed, he reminds me quite a bit of young Harriet the Spy--another lonely child in NYC, and another wunderkind of sorts. Oskar is independent, vulnerable, wise, and yet naive. He's a word-spinner, a storyteller, and a constant inventor. Above all, he's likable.
Foer makes things difficult at times, however, switching viewpoints while bullheadedly refusing to give the reader quick moorings. We find ourselves reading through page after page of disjointed punctuation--is there anyone who really writes like that? Eventually, we are rewarded with clues as to the identities of these various narrators. Obtuse as this technique can be, it does lend greater credence to Oskar's feelings of confusion and loneliness.
Jonathan Safran Foer slowly peels back the layers of the Schell family, until we--the patient readers who stick with it--discover richness and warmth, pathos and pain, woven through nearly every page of this wondrous book. I nearly put down the book a time or two, but I'm glad I stayed with this amazing and heartfelt story. While the style may not appeal to everyone, it is certain to touch some very deeply. Oskar's voice is one that'll stay in my head long past the final page.
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Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel Books In Print, Audio Books.