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Synopsis The prodigiously gifted young writer Jonathan Safran Foer follows up his critically beloved bestseller EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED with the story of Oskar Schell, a precocious nine-year old boy whose father has died in the World Trade Center. Since 9/11, Oskar has become obsessed with disasters of all kinds, and he continually imagines whimsical inventions that will keep people safe. After he discovers a mysterious key belonging to his father, Oskar embarks on a quixotic quest through New York City's five boroughs, searching for the lock the key can open. Interspersed with Oskar's travels is the story of his grandparents, who went through a similarly traumatic experience during the fire-bombing of Dresden, and the stories eventually intertwine in the cathartic climax. Foer uses myriad postmodern tricks and devices (typographical mistakes, photographs, and cartoons) to add a puzzlebox complexity to the powerful emotional core of the novel.
| Size | | Length: | 326 pages | | Height: | 8.5 in | | Width: | 5.8 in | | Thickness: | 1.0 in | | Weight: | 13.6 oz |
Industry Reviews "EXTREMELY LOUD & INCREDIBLEY CLOSE could easily have been a cloying, incoherent mess, but it isn't. It's really a lovely book, humane and quirky and...hard to put down." (03/18/2006)
"It seems clear at this point that Foer has successfully graduated from being a one-off wunderkind to an accomplished and graceful writer. What he has given us is not just a remarkably clever work, but the 9/11 story we need, even if we didn't know it." (03/20/2005)
"Unafraid to show his traumatized characters' constant groping for emotional catharsis, Foer demonstrates once again that he is one of the few contemporary writers willing to risk sentimentalism in order to address great questions of truth, love and beauty." [starred review] (01/31/2005)
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