Extremely compelling
It's not often that I finish a book and immediately want to re-read it, but that happened yesterday afternoon when I finished Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. That's not to say I actually will re-read it right away, but I wouldn't be surprised if I do so in the next year.
I bought it back when we lived in Basel, but hadn't brought myself to read it because I do most of my reading right before bedtime, and I wasn't sure I wanted to read a novel centered around 9/11 before falling asleep. (While we were not directly impacted by the events of 9/11, the memories of that morning--smoke rising across the river from the Pentagon, inability to reach each other because of jammed phone lines, gridlock as people tried to get out of the city, sirens and helicopters, unfounded rumors of other explosions nearby, not knowing how friends working in downtown Manhattan were doing (I used to work just a few blocks from the World Trade Center), nightmares that lasted for days afterward--were not something I really wanted to relive nightly.) After another friend recently read it and raved about it, however, I decided to give it a shot. And am I ever glad I did.
It's basically about love, family, and coping with loss in the context of both 9/11 and the WWII firebombing of Dresden, told from several perspectives. It's not always an easy read because of the different perspectives and other narrative quirks (which is a big reason I'll probably read it again--I think things will be much more clear the second time through). As much as it's genuinely heartbreaking, it's also quite funny as well. The nine-year-old boy at the center of the story who loses his father on 9/11 is one of the most memorable characters of any book I've read (if nothing else, I love the recurring description of being sad as "wearing heavy boots").
All of which is a long way of saying that if you have the patience for the quirky narrative, I highly recommend this book.
We also finally finished season four of The Wire last night, and it was as outstanding as always. Four seasons down, one to go...
I bought it back when we lived in Basel, but hadn't brought myself to read it because I do most of my reading right before bedtime, and I wasn't sure I wanted to read a novel centered around 9/11 before falling asleep. (While we were not directly impacted by the events of 9/11, the memories of that morning--smoke rising across the river from the Pentagon, inability to reach each other because of jammed phone lines, gridlock as people tried to get out of the city, sirens and helicopters, unfounded rumors of other explosions nearby, not knowing how friends working in downtown Manhattan were doing (I used to work just a few blocks from the World Trade Center), nightmares that lasted for days afterward--were not something I really wanted to relive nightly.) After another friend recently read it and raved about it, however, I decided to give it a shot. And am I ever glad I did.
It's basically about love, family, and coping with loss in the context of both 9/11 and the WWII firebombing of Dresden, told from several perspectives. It's not always an easy read because of the different perspectives and other narrative quirks (which is a big reason I'll probably read it again--I think things will be much more clear the second time through). As much as it's genuinely heartbreaking, it's also quite funny as well. The nine-year-old boy at the center of the story who loses his father on 9/11 is one of the most memorable characters of any book I've read (if nothing else, I love the recurring description of being sad as "wearing heavy boots").
All of which is a long way of saying that if you have the patience for the quirky narrative, I highly recommend this book.
We also finally finished season four of The Wire last night, and it was as outstanding as always. Four seasons down, one to go...
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