Upon joining the Healthy Living Blogs community, I learned the book I’d recently completed, Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, was chosen as July’s #HLBBookClub selection.

Even though I haven’t written about literature since college and have no idea how to write a book review, I think it’s time I take part in the virtual book clubbing world.

So without further ado…here’s my review of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (now referred to as ELIC).

I’ve read that people belong to one of two Jonathan Safran Foer camps: either one is annoyed with his modernist literary devises and finds him overrated or (s)he is completely taken with his unique writing style, regarding him as one of today’s best young writers. After reading both his non-fiction (Eating Animals) and ELIC, I fall into the latter category.

I saw the film adaptation of ELIC in theaters, so I knew the story before I opened the book. Even so, nine-year-old Oskar’s narration evoked many emotions and moved me more deeply than any book in my recent memory.

Oskar’s father died on 9/11 when the WTC towers collapsed; though almost 2 years have passed, Oskar, a self-prescribed pacifist and atheist, struggles with this loss and his relationship with his mother.

One day, Oskar finds an envelope (inside a blue vase) containing a key. “Black” is the only marking; determining “Black” must be a name, Oskar sets out on a quest to visit all the Blacks in NYC until he finds the object the key opens.

Along his journey, Oskar meets several people, some of whom he befriends. Between the heartbreaking, yet often hilarious, accounts of his journey, Oskar’s grandmother and grandfather share their stories, as well. Some may argue that the subplots (as well as the images and other visual components) are a distraction. Although they’re difficult to follow in the beginning, I later found them essential to understanding Foer’s themes of grief, trauma, and the struggle between self-destruction and self-preservation.

Though Oskar’s precociousness may seem unrealistic (one critic states that Foer gave “us a nine-year-old with the brain of a twenty-eight-year-old Jonathan Safran Foer”), his innocence shines through, too. Throughout the book, I just wanted to hug him!

I won’t share too much of the plot, except that it reveals how each of us experiences loss and healing in our own unique ways. Though ELIC is inherently sad and emotionally painful, it’s also hopeful and cathartic.

I now plan to read Foer’s earlier novel, Everything is Illuminated, as a result.

Questions for you:

If you’ve read ELIC, what are your thoughts?
If you’ve seen the film and read the book, which did you prefer?