Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close - Jonathan Safran Foer - ★★★★.½

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AUTHOR: Jonathan Safran Foer
GENRE: Contemporary Fiction.
PUBLICATION DATE: April 4, 2006.
RATING: 4.5 stars.


Oskar Schell is a 9 year old New Yorker. His self-made visiting card describes him as "an inventor, amateur entomologist, Francophile, letter writer, pacifist, natural historian, percussionist, romantic, Great Explorer, jeweller, detective, vegan, and collector of butterflies." Intelligent beyond his years and almost too smart for his own good, his world collapses suddenly when his father dies in the September 11th terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.

In the aftermath of this tragedy, he happens to discover a key left by his father in a vase. Considering it one last treasure hunt to connect with his father, Oskar takes it on himself to locate the lock to which the key corresponds. On the way, he meets many New Yorkers, most of whom have something to teach him and something to learn from him. Oskar's search becomes yours, his joy becomes yours, his heartbreak becomes yours.

EL&IC was a wonderful read for me. It does not just have a well-written story but also a interesting (maybe even quirky!) writing style that keeps you moving on steadily. The book has as many light-hearted moments as intense ones. It even contains stories of fictional WWII bombing survivors within its narrative, and those are really horrifying.

I couldn't help but feel that Oskar has some mild form of autism because of certain behavioural aspects manifested by him in the story, but the author doesn't mention this. This made me connect to the book even more. Usually, if the protagonist is depicted as a sufferer of some intellectual disability, then the author gives the prime position in the story to the disorder than the character. In this book, it is Oskar who is the focus of the story, not his behaviour.

A word of caution though. Just because the protagonist is a 9 year old, don't hand this book to your children, not even young teens. I'd recommend this only for mature readers because of its language (which is quite vulgar for a 9 year old) and certain graphic scenes of violence and death.

If you are an audiobook listener, then go for the audiobook without any hesitation. The audio version has multiple narrators, and each of them plays their character so wonderfully that you can't help but live the same emotions while hearing them read. They enhance the book even further.

This has been a nice soul-satisfying book. It's been a really long time since I've smiled and sobbed in the course of a single book.

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