Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close - Jonathan Safran Foer

People from all circles of my life were raving about this book to me: my college roommate, my elementary-school best friend, two girls I'd met in Spain, and my former co-worker. So I ignored my long-standing aversions to both fiction and precocious children and finally read it.

Blech! Did I miss something? I feel like something must be wrong with me because I really did not like this book. I guess it's all supposed to be cool and post-modern (whatever that means), but... I found all that unconventional new crap really distracting and kind of pretentious. "Ooh, my book is special because I have pictures of kooky stuff in it!"

I think I mostly could not get around the fact that Oskar's mother apparently had no problem allowing her nine-year-old son to roam all of New York alone, especially after she lost her husband in such a traumatic way*. And how the hell did Oskar stick with this mission for EIGHT months? I doubt that nine-year-olds can even commit to something for eight HOURS. I mean, yeah, he's supposed to be precocious, but please. (And where'd he get money for MetroCards and cabs?) Also, I found it hard to care about the subplot with Oskar's grandparents. Just the whole thing about their courtship or whatever... and what he wound up doing to her was pretty terrible. Am I supposed to find it romantic somehow? Oh, and he doesn't speak! Does he actually write down ALL of those sentences when he speaks to Oskar later?

Yeah, so in general, I am pretty impressed that JSF has such distinct and original voice (at least, I've never read anything like that), and I appreciated what he was doing artistically. But I just didn't think that any of the characters were all that likable, and I didn't think the plot was very plausible. (But maybe I'm just jealous that I'm not that distinct or original. But... yeah I still didn't like it. Maybe I'm supposed to like it because it references 9/11 and Dresden. Shrug.)

For more fun reviews, check out my friend Arielle's book blog: Two Jews Reviews

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* True story. I knew a set of twins in college who grew up in Manhattan but had never once taken the subway. I was wondering how on earth that was possible until I found out later that while they were babies in Singapore, their baby-sitter tried to kidnap one of them and take her back to the Philippines. The kidnapper's plan was thwarted when she got to the airport and didn't have a passport for the child. So when the family moved to New York, the twins' mom was overly protective of them and forbade them from taking the subway, even up through high school. Therefore, I really cannot believe that a recent 9/11 widow would let her kid just roam around (although I suppose you could argue that people grieve differently, rendering this footnote pointless).