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Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close  By  cover art

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

By: Jonathan Safran Foer
Narrated by: Jeff Woodman, Barbara Caruso, Richard Ferrone
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Publisher's summary

Jonathan Safran Foer's best-selling debut novel, Everything Is Illuminated, wowed critics on its way to winning several literary prizes, including Book of the Year honors from the Los Angeles Times. It has been published in 24 countries and will soon be a major motion picture. Foer's talent continues to shine in this sometimes hilarious and always heartfelt follow-up.

Nine-year-old Oskar Schell is a precocious Francophile who idolizes Stephen Hawking and plays the tambourine extremely well. He's also a boy struggling to come to terms with his father's death in the World Trade Center attacks. As he searches New York City for the lock that fits a mysterious key his father left behind, Oskar discovers much more than he could have imagined.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is a masterfully imagined novel from an author Time hails as "a certified wunderkind".

©2005 Jonathan Safran Foer (P)2005 Recorded Books, LLC

Critic reviews

  • 2005 Audie Award Nominee, Multi-Voiced Performance

"Piercing and so funny." (The Bookseller)
"[Oskar's] first-person narration of his journey is arrestingly beautiful, and readers won't soon forget him." (Booklist)
"Jonathan Safran Foer's second novel is everything one hoped it would be: ambitious, pyrotechnic, riddling, and above all...extremely moving. An exceptional achievement." (Salman Rushdie)
"Brilliant....Unafraid to show his traumatized characters' constant groping for emotional catharsis, Foer demonstrates once again that he is one of the few contemporary writers willing to risk sentimentalism in order to address great questions of truth, love, and beauty." (Publishers Weekly)

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What listeners say about Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

If you wanna to

If you wanna know how make your anus make up Hopkins voice inside a limousine with a old lady by destroying some else privates part with love to dead animals.
As you can see it’s more like writing of mentally ill person who need a help since he was kid. This book will make you believe that you got taste, you probable connoisseur and intelegencia. But the thing is, you not. Book is more trash squeeze of nothing. Right fir for market in US. Should be bestseller actually.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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Don’t miss this book!

A touching story with rare characters that lodge themselves in your heart for ever.
The readers are wonderful to listen to!

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Poignant & Heartwarming

An incredible story! Oscar is such an amazing character, I love him. I laughed and cried and never wanted it to end.

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Brilliant as Expected

Everything is Illuminated is one of my all time favorite books so I expected to like this. And it is excellent. The right mix of Foer quirky and deeply human. Oscar is a wonderful main character who is deeply likable, both innocent and knowing.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Very difficult to follow

This story was very difficult to follow. There were multiple times that I thought I jumped ahead accidently. The construction of the narrative felt like a puzzle- all jumbled up and jumping constantly to different narrators and time periods. The story at the heart was good , but needed some better editing.

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    2 out of 5 stars
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Meh

treacly fluff - people die tragically everyday so what, why do we have to treat this as special?

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    3 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Skip the book, Watch the movie

While listening to this book I decided to watch the movie also. I much preferred the movie, mostly because it condensed this long drawn out story and because it didn’t make out all the characters as a bunch of incredibly strange people.

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Profoundly Thought Prevoking

This novel leaves one conflicted with a plethora of emotion. I found myself thinking about it often. The performances are wonderful and I felt fully immersed. 10/10

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    3 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Magical Realism meets 9/11 Grief

The prose are very good, the characters interesting, and the story complex, but I found the shifting undercurrents disconcerting. The book seems to shift between a young reader teen grief story and an adult magically real metaphor with a dash of existentialism. I found the sentimentality bit watery yet slightly cloying and the metaphors a tad contrived.

This was not bad, but I never laughed, never misted up, did not learn anything, and did not end up glad I had read it.

The narration was solid and clear.

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not what I thought it was

pseudo intellectual garbage. if I knew how to exchange, I would have. won't bother finishing

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