Extremely Loud

The novel is told from three different points of view, all in first person. Oskar tells the story as it takes place and his grandmother and grandfather tell their stories that have taken place before he was born. I enjoy the change in perspective because the telling of the grandparents' stories makes Oskar's story more meaningful. The switch of perspectives is a bit distracting, but eventually I find that it becomes something that you look forward to as you read, and something that you are able to get used to.

Oskar Schell is an extremely gifted and eccentric nine year old who lost his father on September 11th. He almost seems an impossible character-one who is able to understand not only difficult intellectual concepts, but difficult emotional ones. He is searching New York City to find the lock which his key will open (a mysterious key he found in his father's closet in an envelope lableled "Black"). He ultimately believes that finding out the meaning of this key will help him to find out more about his father's death. I think he is also searching for a reason to hold on to his father's death-something he doesn't want to let go of-and searching in people for a reason why bad things happen to good people. He seems to have an obsession with everything in the world that makes people sad or hurt, and he carries that weight around.

I don't believe that a blank page is an image, but this is my absolute favorite part of the book where Foer uses an interesting method to illustrate the story. When Oskar's grandfather is telling us about how he begins to read his wife's life story he says he picks up the pages but "this is all I saw" and then we turn the pages only to see blank ones. I think the fact that we are expecting at least something, one word, one picture, one letter, but we see nothing is incrediblely moving. And then the grandfather wants to cry but he can't, he wants to be drowned in the room with "two thousand white pages." We can see the nothingness and emptiness the grandmother feels, even though she meant to write something, but couldn't see that she wasn't.