Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Jonathan Safran Foer

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2006 - Fiction - 326 pages

Jonathan Safran Foer emerged as one of the most original writers of his generation with his best-selling debut novel, Everything Is Illuminated. Now, with humor, tenderness, and awe, he confronts the traumas of our recent history. What he discovers is solace in that most human quality, imagination.
Meet Oskar Schell, an inventor, Francophile, tambourine player, Shakespearean actor, jeweler, pacifist, correspondent with Stephen Hawking and Ringo Starr. He is nine years old. And he is on an urgent, secret search through the five boroughs of New York. His mission is to find the lock that fits a mysterious key belonging to his father, who died in the World Trade Center on 9/11.
An inspired innocent, Oskar is alternately endearing, exasperating, and hilarious as he careens from Central Park to Coney Island to Harlem on his search. Along the way he is always dreaming up inventions to keep those he loves safe from harm. What about a birdseed shirt to let you fly away? What if you could actually hear everyone's heartbeat? His goal is hopeful, but the past speaks a loud warning in stories of those who've lost loved ones before. As Oskar roams New York, he encounters a motley assortment of humanity who are all survivors in their own way. He befriends a 103-year-old war reporter, a tour guide who never leaves the Empire State Building, and lovers enraptured or scorned. Ultimately, Oskar ends his journey where it began, at his father's grave. But now he is accompanied by the silent stranger who has been renting the spare room of his grandmother's apartment. They are there to dig up his father's empty coffin.

What people are saying

Review: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

User Review  - Christina White - Goodreads

This was horrible. The writing was horrible. The book jumped around and around and was so hard to follow. It was like reading something written by someone who was half squirrel and half crack head ...

Review: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

User Review  - Mike - Goodreads

Extremely Loud and Incredbily Close: Jonathan Foer's novel of love, loss, and memory There are events that leave an indelible stamp on us for a great portion of our lives. This happens from generation ...

About the author

Jonathan Safran Foer is the author of the bestseller Everything Is Illuminated, named Book of the Year by the Los Angeles Times and the winner of numerous awards, including the Guardian First Book Prize, the National Jewish Book Award, and the New York Public Library Young Lions Prize. Foer was one of Rolling Stone's “People of the Year” and Esquire's “Best and Brightest.” Foreign rights to his new novel have already been sold in ten countries. The film of Everything Is Illuminated, directed by Liev Schreiber and starring Elijah Wood, will be released in August 2005. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close has been optioned for film by Scott Rudin Productions in conjunction with Warner Brothers and Paramount Pictures. Foer lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close; Mariner Books
• Author: Jonathan Safran Foer
• Edition: illustrated, reprint
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2006
• ISBN: 0618711651, 9780618711659
• Length: 326 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / Literary