Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

author
Jonathan Safran Foer

the spiel
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is, well, extremely loud and incredibly close. Set in New York City in the aftermath of September 11th, we are introduced to Oskar, an eight year old mastermind with a killer sense of irony.
Told in his voice, this is the story of a key—more specifically, a mysterious key found in his father's closet months after he is killed in the collapse of the World Trade Center. As we follow Oskar and his cast of characters around the five boroughs, on their quest for missing locks, answers, and fathers, we learn what Oskar inevitably learns: that everybody loses everybody. But what we gain is invaluable. Stunningly and deftly written, this book sinks its teeth into you and doesn't let go.

other people who liked this book (or at least say they did)
Salman Rushdie
"Jonathan Safran Foer's second novel is everything one hoped it would be - ambitious, pyrotechnic, riddling, and above all, in its portrait of orphaned Oskar, extremely moving. Perhaps the highest praise I can give is to say it completely earns the right to take on the Trade Center atrocity. The powerful emotions generated feel deserved, not borrowed. An exceptional achievement."

Cynthia Ozick
"Is there a novel that, in a fit of envy, Holden Caulfield, Huck Finn, Harriet the Spy, and Krazy Kat -- all of the above -- might long to enter? And would feel at home in? Yes! Jonathan Safran Foer's funny, tender,
tragic, ingeniously imaginative Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close has all the kick and brio of a child's wild vision and a child's wild hurt. Foer's nine-year-old Oskar Schell, confronting the cataclysm of our time, is an
American original."

some other things this author has written
Everything is Illuminated