Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

By: Jonathan Safran Foer

Narrated by: Jeff Woodman, Barbara Caruso, Richard Ferrone

Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins

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)

A few slow moments early on

But it quickly picked up momentum until I couldn’t stop listening until I finished it.

An interesting listen…

There’s some good things about this story. I like the narrators. They really bring this story to life. The kids character is interesting. He thinks differently. (Don’t like how crass and sexual he speaks, personally.)

The bad: not sure what’s up with the sex details between the grandparents. That gets a little weird after a while. This book falls flat emotionally. Most of what could make this more engaging is replaced with stream of consciousness-like prose. Gets old after a few hours. Also some of the dialogue is drawn out too much.

Extremely Excellent and Incredibly Interesting

Why did I wait so long to read/listen to this book? It was wonderfully performed and excellently written. I looked forward to driving so I could listen. I laughed and cried. There is so much going on in this book that I’m going to reread it.

Far, far better than the print version

The people at the post office, grocery store, and library probably think I'm crazy because as I approached the last hour of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, I simply couldn't stop listening, but I also couldn't stop crying. Not sobbing hysterically, just tears running down my face continually because of the bare truths made evident in this novel:
~Love
~Truth
~It's always necessary.

Oskar Schell is a nine-year old whose father has been lost in the World Trade Center on 9/11. Oskar is curious, inquisitive, and truthful, characteristics which make his life interesting, difficult, humorous, and painful. ELIC is the story of Oskar's quest to find the lock to match the key he believes his father has left for him. Both his grandfather and grandmother tell their stories in chapters entitled "Why I'm Not Where You Are" and "My Feelings" respectively. As soon as Oskar asked, "Why didn’t he say goodbye?" and "Why didn’t he say I love you?" I knew I had to finish the book. I have had those same questions, and felt like a nine-year old when trying to answer them. I don't know if answers are forthcoming, but the search for answers is worthwhile and necessary.

I approached this book with a bit of trepidation because I tried to read the print version several years ago and couldn't get past the formatting. This time I listened to it; I don't think I lost anything by not having access to the blank pages, pictures, and words on top of each other in the print version, and gained quite a bit of understanding by simply hearing the book read. This is not a book that I thought would translate well to audio, but for me it was a huge improvement.

Tedious and largely meaningless

This book has generally received very good reviews so I must be the odd man out here. I found it to be mostly boring with one of the most dysfunctional families I have every had the displeasure to meet. While the story is supposedly about the search of a boy for the origins of a key linked to his father, there are really 3 main characters in the book; Oscar, the boy, his grandmother and his grandfather.

Oscar, the boy who lost his father in the 9/11 terrorist attack, seems largely normal for a boy his age and reminds me somewhat of myself at that age, although he carries more phobias that any boy I ever met growing up in New York City. Some of that probably is supposed to come from the experience of losing his father but some seem to come from nowhere I can understand and it strains credibility that a boy who lives in New York who is afraid to get on a ferry or ride a subway will plan to walk all over the 5 boroughs of New York looking for the person who knows something about the key he found. It seems even stranger that his mother allows him to do this without being overly concerned. But, even if you can live with that it is even more difficult to understand his grandparents.

His grandmother and grandfather are decidedly strange and, since their story constitutes about 60% of the book, that is not a trivial thing. The stream-of-consciousness writing and the total lack of any relationship between their story and Oscar's makes it difficult for me to understand why it is even part of this book. Add to that the fact that they are not particularly interesting characters and that their relationship strains credulity and you have a recipe for a meaningless book.

Perhaps it is because I worked as an engineer and expect events to bear some relationship to the story that I found this book so disjointed and without purpose. Perhaps those who are more open to the psychology of people rather than the purposeful relationships of events will find this book more interesting and worthwhile. I found it to be boring and it took an effort for me to finish it. On the upside the book is well narrated and there are some interesting surprises but I am unable to give this book more than 3 stars.

listen

This is a wonderful rendering of a thoughtful and captivating set of stories. The characters are very well developed, and the narrators are consistently good interpreters. I was touched by the human frailties captured in sometimes humorous, sometimes tragic moments. I highly recommend this audiobook.

My favorite Audiobook

I've been an Audible.com subcsriber since 2001, and this is the first time I considered listening to a book over again as soon as I finished it. It was that good. The readers are some of the best I've heard. The story really wow-ed me, from start to end.

I listen to books while I walk, and I probably made a spectacle of myself several times when something in the book made my eyes well up with tears.

OMG. Tragic and beautiful.

This book brought me to tears repeatedly. I cried from sadness, shame, pity, love, beauty and happiness. I never cry.

I'm glad that I listened to this book. I feel changed for the better because I took the time out of my busy life to contemplate; and that is what I think was the authors purpose, but I would never want to experience it again. This story is so heavy, heady, and well written that its like therapy for the soul. It was a cathartic read.

Love Love Loved It!

This is one of the saddest, most wonderful books I've ever read. Having lived in Manhattan on 9/11, I appreciated the subtle ways that the author and the narrators captured the nuances of that time in New York. The characters are unique, but in so many ways relatable. I don't know how anyone cannot love this book.

Extremely Loud and interesting

This was a very interesting story of a child and his family's reaction to the death of a family member through the disaster call 9/11. It made me smile, cry, wonder and cheer the boy on. Great listen!