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Extreme­ly Loud and Incred­i­bly Close unfolds like an urban folk tale, a nar­ra­tive of love and loss told essen­tial­ly through the eyes of ten-year old Oskar Schell, who lives on the Upper West Side, one of the most endear­ing young­sters to enter Amer­i­can fic­tion since Hold­en Cau­field, but much more charm­ing, com­pas­sion­ate and pre­co­cious.įoer mov­ing­ly cap­tures Oskar’s breathy sen­tence rhythms, the onrush of inde­pen­dent claus­es that fold in his favorite French phras­es (rai­son d’être), Amer­i­can slang (“weird,” ​ “jose,” as in no way … ), and euphemisms (“shi­take”), and his sud­den stopped con­ver­sa­tions (“what the”) that fol­low from con­fu­sion or com­ing too near painful truths, as he tries to ward off night­mares and extend fan­tasies that might reclaim some part of his father from death.

Extreme­ly imag­i­na­tive and incred­i­bly clever in weav­ing togeth­er the hor­ror of the World Trade Cen­ter with the dev­as­tat­ing bomb­ing of Dres­den, Foer’s new book, though not a Jew­ish sto­ry, mag­i­cal­ly res­onates with a Jew­ish sen­si­bil­i­ty. Sec­ond nov­els, par­tic­u­lar­ly those that fol­low the kind of block­buster suc­cess 24-year old Jonathan Safran Foer enjoyed for Every­thing Is illu­mi­nat­ed, bear bur­dens, or, as the inven­tive cen­tral char­ac­ter in Foer’s new book Extreme­ly Loud and Incred­i­bly Close would say, ​ “heavy boots.” Foer’s new lin­guis­tic tour de force beau­ti­ful­ly sur­pass­es his debut nov­el, even as it tries a bit too hard to be dis­tinc­tive by adding illus­tra­tions (blur­ry pho­tos and graph­ic design) to a text that doesn’t need them.