Seen from a different perspective, however, EL&IC is phenomenally energetic and bold. If this brief synopsis already makes you feel somewhat queasy, the entire book is likely to make you very ill indeed. Haunted by messages left on the answer-phone while his dad was being incinerated, Oskar embarks on a quest to solve the mystery of a key found in a vase, armed only with pubescent pluck and the imperative "to do something, like sharks, who die if they don't swim, which I know about". But, looking back at my jottings in the margins of Foer's new book, I can't deny how frequently and furiously I've scribbled "Aaaarrghh!"Įxtremely Loud & Incredibly Close is principally narrated by nine-year-old Oskar Schell, a tambourine-playing, jewellery-making, butterfly-collecting, Shakespeare-quoting little nerd who ceaselessly conceives impossible inventions (such as "incredibly long ambulances that connect every building to a hospital") in a desperate attempt to cope with the grief (or, as Oskar puts it, "heavy boots") of losing his father in the twin towers disaster.
I would have preferred not to take sides. Dissenters dismiss him as an adolescent chatterbox, all artifice and no substance, all cuteness and no grit. In the opposite camp, Foer's fiction triggers violently allergic reactions. One side has given him a rapturous reception: confetti-showers of praise, numerous prizes including the Guardian First Book award (for Everything Is Illuminated, published when he was only 25) and, for this new novel, a fervent endorsement from Salman Rushdie ("ambitious, pyrotechnic, riddling, and above all. Just as the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center instantly epitomised the clash between Islamic fundamentalism and capitalist hubris, the writing of Jonathan Safran Foer has divided readers into vehemently opposed factions.
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