Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

"Nine-year-old Oskar Schell has embarked on an urgent, secret mission that will take him through the five boroughs of New York. His goal is to find the lock that matched a mysterious key that belonged to his father, who died in the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11. This seemingly impossible task will bring Oskar into contact with survivors of all sorts on an exhilarating, affecting, often hilarious, and ultimately healing journey."

I probably would have never chosen to read this book on my own accord, the topic itself, a child dealing with the grief of losing a parent in a terrible way is terrifying and just tugs on my emotions. But I want to watch the movie, and I always try to read the novel before watching the movie (if there is one). And I'm happy that I did.

Oskar is not your typical/normal nine-year-old, he's wiser, older if you will. He has different interestes, he loves everything French, he's a vegan, he loves to make jewelry, he loves science and he loves to write to letters to scientists in different fields. My nine-year-old loves video games, Lego and graphic novels. So that's quite a contrast.

I fell in love with Oskar, hurt and wanting to really know how his father died. He finds a key and because of the quest games that he used to play with father, he thinks it's one last quest that his father left for him. Along the way he meets different type of people, each of them with their own problems, and he learns important things from these people.

What really made this story wonderful was the way the author included visuals in the book to make a point on how important this quest was for Oskar. The secondary stories were just as important to the book as Oskar's. His grandparents had their own issues to deal and I loved experiencing the way each of them expressed their pain.

I highly recommend this book, just have tissues handy.

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safron Foer (5/5) Fiction; Published: Houghton Mifflin Company (2005); New Author; Favorite Read 2012; Book to Film; Keeper Shelf; Books 2012 (2);