The middle of last week Foer spoke at one of the Chicago Public Libraries and I decided to go, knowing from the start that I do not want my beliefs about food changed. (His new book, Eating Animals, is about factory farming and his choice to stay a vegetarian.) What I was surprised to find as he read sections of his work of non-fiction was how poetic his stories of his family were, which leads me to why I decided to go back and reread one of my favorite novels.

The three stories (Oskar, Thomas, and the Grandmother) and all unique and compelling. Foer has a way of making his characters real while setting them in intense and terrible situations. Every time I reread one of my old favorites I get slightly panicked that I will have outgrown them. I am pleased to say that once again that wasn't the case. I may be older, but Oskar is still easy to relate to. Thomas's stories are still beautifully tragic, Foer takes you on journeys that you may not want to always go on, but you enjoy none the less. The purposes of the pictures is clear, but often times they are unnecessary and sometimes unsettling. A great read ( )

Een jongen met PDD NOS gaat een poosje na het overlijden van zijn vader uitzoeken wat er is gebeurd. Zijn Vader is overleden tijdens het inferno in de Twin Towers.
Een aantal aspecten van zijn autisme zijn geloofwaardig. Het autisme vond ik geloofwaardiger in "Het woonderbaarlijke voorval met de hond in de nacht" ( )

Extrem manipulierend und letztlich ziemlich kitschig...: ... fand ich diesen Roman. Zwar ist dies ein Buch mit 100% Heulgarantie. Doch die Art wie der Autor da Rührung erzeugt, hinterließ bei mir Unbehagen. Um den Leser zu bewegen, werden herangezogen:
1) der Elfte September,
2) die Bombardierung Dresdens,
3) die Atombombe auf Hiroshima.
Hier wird also mit allen Mitteln auf die Tränendrüse des Leser gedrückt, was manche dann für gute Literatur halten mögen.

Daß dieses Buch Kitsch ist, kann ich übrigens ganz einfach nachweisen, indem ich an dieser Stelle für Sie seine Haupthandlung kurz zusammenfasse: Ein hochbegabter Junge der seinen Vater plötzlich und tragisch verlor, macht sich auf die Suche nach dem "Warum" und findet dabei seinen verschollenen Großvater wieder. Dies ist die typische Zusammenfassung eines mittelprächtigen Historienromanes. Ich finde es aber noch viel zu früh, ein Ereignis wie den Elften September für einen Historienroman zu benutzen. Das Ganze ist schließlich noch keine zehn Jahre her. Und im richtigen Leben haben die Angehörigen der Toten des Elften September keinen Ausgleich vom Schicksal erhalten indem verschollene Verwandte wiederauftauchen. Überhaupt werden in diesem Buch viele Handlungsstränge miteinander verwoben, die man besser getrennt gelassen hätte. Zuviele sich im Laufe der Handlung ergebende Zusammenhänge sind für mich immer ein untrügliches Zeichen für Kitsch.

Um das Kitschige zu kaschieren, gibt es im Text typographische Experimente und zwischendurch Fotos. Diese Fotos zerstören die inneren Bilder im Kopf des Lesers und dienen ebenfalls seiner gedanklichen Führung. Geschickt wird der Leser manipuliert und geleitet. Eine eigenständige Auseinandersetzung des Lesers mit dem Grauen und Verlust des Elften September kann so allerdings nicht stattfinden. Dafür wird halt umso mehr geheult.

Es gibt übrigens einige typographisch experimentelle Bücher, die besser sind, wie zum Beispiel "Die Brautprinzessin" und auch Werke von Raymond Federman. Federman überlebte während der Nazizeit versteckt in einem Wandschrank die Verschleppung seiner Familie in ein Konzentrationslager. Wenn er über das erlebte Grauen schreibt, ist es eben nicht kitschig, weil er den Schrecken nicht benützt, wie Jonathan Safran Froer es in seinem Roman tut, sondern ihn verarbeitet.

Sorry Mr. Froer - für das literarische Verwursten von größtem menschlichem Leid gibt's bei mir nur 3 Sterne.

Molto forte, incredibilmente vicino

The authors style of writing took a while to get used to but the message came through incredibly loud and clear. This book moved me to tears and laughter over and over and I often just wanted to give Oskar Schell a huge hug. ( )

This is one of my ultimate favorite books and I knew it from the very first page. JSF's style of writing is so beautiful. ( )

I really enjoyed this book--I liked more than Everything Is Illuminated. Just a great story, only enriched by the adding of pictures and graphics. Absolutely wonderful. ( )

This book is creatively written in a quirky, unusual style and tells the story of Oskar, a nine-year-old boy from New York City, who lost his father on 9/11. Oskar is wise beyond his years and yet, still a child, a divergent thinker, and hilariously funny. It is told with tenderness, humor, and poignancy which made me laugh and cry, sometimes at the same time. Woven through is a parallel story of Oskar’s grandparents, who suffered through the tragedy of the bombing of Dresden, and have carried their sadness with them ever since. Loved it! ( )

So unique and so poignant. ( )

I absolutely loved reading this book. It had been recommended to me by a friend so I had high expectations and it met them completely. It was great how it dealt with such a heavy topic like 9/11 and was still an enjoyable read.

I enjoyed reading it, but I also read it the last time he wrote it. I like that he dealt with 9/11 without making a statement about how anyone should feel about it. I have a hard time accepting his style as a style though, and not a gimmick. ( )

This is a great book in general. I've never read anything like it. At times incredibly confusing, at times extremely enlightening, this book, which focuses on the effects that WWII and 9/11 have taken on a particular family, is a delightful read about a terrifying subject. I can't imagine anyone not getting something out of it. ( )

Favorite part was when he got a letter from Stephen Hawking.
Loved that they never directly mentioned 9/11. ( )

love the quirky characters and original style of storytelling. an engaging read. ( )

Superb ( )

Infuriating and baffling that Foer is so widely read. This is appalling schmaltz. He wants us to feel a twinge, maybe tear up, hopefully even bawl, and to do it, ideally, on every page. It isn’t enough that a man is losing his ability to speak: his wife has to be going blind. It isn’t enough that another man hasn’t spoken in two decades: he has to have a bed with three thousand nails driven into it, one for each year since his wife died. It isn’t enough to have a heart-rending letter from your father: you have to also have one from a convict who doesn’t even know he’s been in prison forty years, and anther letter, and another… At one point there is an unintentional parody of the one-cathartic-moment-per-page formula, when a woman is abandoned by her husband, and everything moves her: “A dog following a stranger. That made me feel so much. A calendar that showed the wrong month. I could have cried over it. I did. Where the smoke from a chimney ended. How an overturned bottle rested at the edge of a table.” (p. 180) These sentences are separated by four or five spaces, because it isn’t enough just to read them: we have to feel the spaces, the emptiness, in the woman’s life, and we have to feel it again every time she says anything.
People say the book is well written. But when the writing is good, it is always necessary to say what purpose it serves. The most stupefyingly miasmic adventitious emotional crises are propped up, electrified, by Foer’s tack-sharp cleverness: but why do that? Why not write standard Romantic prose? The book is like an emotional Frankenstein, a nineteenth-century romance novel brought to life with McSweeney’s style wit and dispatch, who can only sit around and blubber.
The book is a swill of perfumed emotions. It is elaborately artificial and yet gluely emotional: as if the exotic perfumes of Huysmans were to meet the kitschy sentimentality of O Henry. What kind of people feel emotion this way? What kind of reader thinks that real, powerful emotion comes in 300-word bursts, repeated 300 times in the course of a novel? What kind of person is always so close to tears that they are moved by this kind of writing? It’s frightening, really, that there are people for whom this is a persuasive account of our emotional lives. ( )

http://tamaranth.blogspot.com/2009/07... ( )

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close follows Oskar, a creative young boy throughout his adventures in post-9/11 New York City. Since the death of his father in the attacks on the World Trade Centers, Oskar has been haunted by message his father left on the answering machine, a message only Oskar heard. Finding a key amongst his father's belongings, Oskar sets out on a search for the door, or whatever, it belongs to, meeting many characters and friends along the way. ( )

Safran Foers beskrivning av pojkens tankar och känslör efter förlusten av sin far är mycket bra. Jag gillar hans sätt att dra paralleller om bombningen av Dresden under andra världskriget, även om det naturligtvis var en mycket större utplåning (dessutom utförd av de allierade!).
Romanens disposition liknar inget jag tidigare läst och mediets "bok" uttnyttjas till fullo, tror jag. Det blir intressant, inte bara berättartekniskt, utan också formmässigt. ( )

Amazing! One of the best books I've read ever. Original, captivating, imaginative...the myth about the sixth borough alone is awesome, and it's snuggled among three incredibly moving life stories and countless interesting people. ( )

I know it won't sound like I loved this book when I say that it left me feeling empty. But I do love this book. I guess the emptiness is that sad kind of feeling you get when you finish a story in which you've been completely engrossed since you began reading it. But it's also that strange, just-tolerable empty feeling that reminds you of missing things in your life - times, places, people. That's what this book did to me.

There are so many curious and beautiful complexities in this one story I don't know where to begin. Mostly it is about losing things and searching for those missing pieces of our lives to try to make sense of what we have been left with. Sometimes what was happening was unclear to me, but that only made me identify with Oskar's character more and sympathise with the way he needed to make sense of everything that had happened to him, and how that led him to needing to make sense of other people.

Many people I've spoken to don't like the way it was written - that he was too ambitious in his scope or that the writing comes across as forced. I disagree. While I was reading it I was completely engrossed in the story, and thought about the characters long after I finished. That, for me, is the sign of a great story. ( )

Engaging and full of symbolism. Requires full attention to "get it." Great characters, especially the main protagonist. Includes many illustrations that add to the content of the book.

A remarkable book, but in the end I'm not convinced Foer carries it off. The idea, seemingly Tristram Shandy meet Huckleberry Finn, combined with the cross generational juxtaposition of 9/11 and the bombing of Dresden, is vast. Yet - and perhaps I am an obtuse reader - the links were often unclear, the leaps befuddled. The writing is tender, yes, but I'm not convinced. Nice try but no coconut? ( )

Made me cry, and very few books ever do that. Story of a 9-11 orphan trying to find out about his father. ( )

This is the rarest of creations: A book that carves an individual path in terms of style. A simple story revealing complex, funny, moving and thought-provoking moments about life, love and family. An inventive treasureof a novel, this is the book that made Foer one of my favourite authors ever. ( )