Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close By Jonathan Safran Foer
Synopsis:
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.
Review:
When I first picked this book up off of the shelf and flipped through the pages, I thought to myself "this is going to be interesting." The pages were filled with photos of doorknobs, colorful scribbles and unintelligible text. And for some reason it excited me.
In the book, excerpts from Oskar's grandfather's diary and letters to him from his grandmother are intertwined with the quirky narration of nine year old Oskar. The book is quite eventful and I found myself, many times, wishing I could have been there to travel along.
The story slowly reveals itself and all of the seemingly aimless interjections I had seen while skimming the pages began to make perfect sense. After a day of reading I had finished the novel and wanted to start all over again. Do yourself a favor and read this book.
Excerpt from the book:
What about a teakettle? What if the spout opened and closed when the steam came out, so it would become a mouth, and it could whistle pretty melodies, or do Shakespeare, or just crack up with me? I could invent a teakettle that reads in Dad's voice, so I could fall asleep, or maybe a set of kettles that sings the chorus of "Yellow Submarine," which is a song by the Beatles, who I love, because entomology is one of my raisons d'être, which is a French expression that I know. Another good thing is that I could train my anus to talk when I farted. If I wanted to be extremely hilarious, I'd train it to say, "Wasn't me!" every time I made an incredibly bad fart. And if I ever made an incredibly bad fart in the Hall of Mirrors, which is in Versailles, which is outside of Paris, which is in France, obviously, my anus would say, "Ce n'étais pas moi!"
-Oskar Schell
This book is also scheduled to be adapted as a movie. The release date is sometime in 2009.
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