I read this book over the winter, but I didn't know there was a movie coming out. Often I read the book and listen to the audio book. The audio version had various narrators to give voice to the mother, the child and the grandmother. The questions that kept coming up in my mind, the parts that didn't make sense, many of them were resolved at the end of the book. The boy, Oskar Schell, has lost his father during the attack on the Twin Towers in New York City on 9/11/2001. He lives with his mother, and his grandmother lives in an apartment across the street. he is very close to his grandmother, in fact he would stay with her when he was younger and his parents were at work. Now he is about nine, can go home by himself, but still he will call his grandmother and ask if she is okay. He is not coping with the death of his father very well. He is tormented by the phone calls that his father made to the apartment during the attack, but he cannot bring himself to talk to his mother about those calls. His father kept saying, please pick up, we may be going to the roof to be rescued, but he never said goodbye, or I love you, and this is something that Oskar wants to keep to himself. He is going through his father's things and finds a vase, with a key inside. He decides that this key must be important, he must find the lock it belongs to, and thus the story begins; he is meeting many people in New York City as he tries to solve the mystery his father has left for him. There are flashbacks into the grandmother's life, her childhood in Germany, the death of her family in the bombing during the war. Little by little we find out the deep secrets of her marriage, her husband, and why Oskar's father was raised by his mother alone. The story has twists that make it interesting, things the child doesn't know, but his mother does, and his grandmother cannot tell him. Those little revelations make up the book, and how all of us have to deal with grief in our own way and find our own answers. I look forward to the movie, but I know beforehand that some characters were mixed together, and that in itself makes it seem weird. My first reading of anything by Jonathan Safran Foer, a young writer.
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
I read this book over the winter, but I didn't know there was a movie coming out. Often I read the book and listen to the audio book. The audio version had various narrators to give voice to the mother, the child and the grandmother. The questions that kept coming up in my mind, the parts that didn't make sense, many of them were resolved at the end of the book. The boy, Oskar Schell, has lost his father during the attack on the Twin Towers in New York City on 9/11/2001. He lives with his mother, and his grandmother lives in an apartment across the street. he is very close to his grandmother, in fact he would stay with her when he was younger and his parents were at work. Now he is about nine, can go home by himself, but still he will call his grandmother and ask if she is okay. He is not coping with the death of his father very well. He is tormented by the phone calls that his father made to the apartment during the attack, but he cannot bring himself to talk to his mother about those calls. His father kept saying, please pick up, we may be going to the roof to be rescued, but he never said goodbye, or I love you, and this is something that Oskar wants to keep to himself. He is going through his father's things and finds a vase, with a key inside. He decides that this key must be important, he must find the lock it belongs to, and thus the story begins; he is meeting many people in New York City as he tries to solve the mystery his father has left for him. There are flashbacks into the grandmother's life, her childhood in Germany, the death of her family in the bombing during the war. Little by little we find out the deep secrets of her marriage, her husband, and why Oskar's father was raised by his mother alone. The story has twists that make it interesting, things the child doesn't know, but his mother does, and his grandmother cannot tell him. Those little revelations make up the book, and how all of us have to deal with grief in our own way and find our own answers. I look forward to the movie, but I know beforehand that some characters were mixed together, and that in itself makes it seem weird. My first reading of anything by Jonathan Safran Foer, a young writer.
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