Book of the Week: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Recently, there have been a lot of commercials for the new movie with Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock called “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.” With two seasoned, respected actors, one can assume it should probably be a pretty good movie, so Dad, Dave, and I made plans to get together next weekend and see it. When I found out that the story was a book first, and my roomies Beth and Dani had both read and loved it, I knew that it needed to be my book of the week. I’m always pretty adamant about reading/viewing both the movie and book versions of stories if they exist because I enjoy comparing the two. I usually like the book better, but there are some cinematic gems out there (I really love the movie of “The Help” and am suuuper pumped for “The Hunger Games” movie to come out!!!).

Anyway, here’s what the book looks like. Really cool cover.

After a week away, it was nice to get back to my Kindle! Still loving it.

Oh my, this book was great. The style of writing is so, so interesting. The main speaker is Oskar, a nine-year-old boy, who is one of the most thoughtful, inquisitive, inventive little characters I’ve ever encountered in a book. It reads almost like a stream of consciousness from his own mind, with unusual punctuation, breaking up of paragraphs, repetition of lines, and even pictures. His thoughts are also interrupted by some chapters that are letters written by his grandparents.

The story is quirky, but absolutely heartbreaking. The story takes place in 2003, and Oskar is still struggling with the death of his father, who died in the World Trade Center on September 11th. He is completely lost without his dad, and is searching for meaning in life and a way to stay connected to his father. The sub-story of his grandparents’ complicated, sad marriage is also pretty heartbreaking, too. Unsurprisingly, based on how emotional I can get, I finished this book tonight just bawling. 

Now, you may ask, why on earth would I say that this book was great when it sounds so sad? The thing is, while it was really sad, there were beautiful glimmers of hope in the story. Small, yet profound moments that remind us that even when it seems pretty hopeless overall, a simple conversation or a moment shared between two people can be beautiful. I also recommend it because, as I stated when I talked about “The Help,” sometimes it’s important to read/think about things that are a little hard like racism or September 11th, because, although we may like to pretend that they didn’t, they happened, and I think it’s important to acknowledge that and reflect on it sometimes. It helps us understand the history that got us to where we are today and can perhaps teach us things to help going forward.