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A review by mariamreadsalot
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
5.0
With some books, you either hate or love them. With this one, I love it. I love the jumbled words, I love the pictures, and I love the honesty of his selfish emotions. I love how guilty the whole thing makes me feel. I love how human being can be so god damn self-centered about their own fears and needs and hopes that they do not see what the person next to them is doing. I love it so much. I love Oskar for his peculiarity, for being a damn curious kid. I love his Mom for being so trusting and such a beacon of strength. I love his Grandma for giving me warm feelings. I never wished for a grandma before but now I do. I love her love for words. I love Grandpa Thomas, even if he left and he hurt Grandma. I can't explain to you why I need books like these; books about family and about love and about tragedy. Maybe I need them to remind me that I live my own life filled with my own occurrences, whether I thought of them worthy of documenting or not.
I felt a bit out of place when I began it because I didn’t think the mind of a nine year old was where I’d like to spend three hundred pages in, but it wasn’t just that. There was a story far more complex than I thought. The quest of the key didn’t interest very much but the people Oskar met, all those Blacks, and Mr. Black of all of them mattered a lot to me. I loved each and every word. Because it omitted nothing, it spilled out his thoughts without caring about it sounding pretentious. We humans think too hard about sounding smart, or thoughtful, that we do not let ourselves be human and just be selfish. Think of nothing but sadness for a while, because that sure will make you appreciate your goddamn happiness.
We have so much time, yet we rarely see the impending clock. Why indeed are we living our lives not knowing each other, or telling who we love that we love them, or opening our hearts to new loves, or holding on to people who seem too hurt to hold on to their true selves? These questions all popped into my head whilst reading some comments on the site. It saddens me that people take a book and take characters and turn them into words. This happening happened to people. There are kids like Oskar, people like Grandpa who could not get past their fears and tragedies, Grandmothers so loving like Grandma, and Moms who wept all the time but not in front of their kids. These people exist. These people have their own circumstances so how dare you call a book this pure, this outspoken, pretentious and irritating?
You are pretentious and irritating!
I felt a bit out of place when I began it because I didn’t think the mind of a nine year old was where I’d like to spend three hundred pages in, but it wasn’t just that. There was a story far more complex than I thought. The quest of the key didn’t interest very much but the people Oskar met, all those Blacks, and Mr. Black of all of them mattered a lot to me. I loved each and every word. Because it omitted nothing, it spilled out his thoughts without caring about it sounding pretentious. We humans think too hard about sounding smart, or thoughtful, that we do not let ourselves be human and just be selfish. Think of nothing but sadness for a while, because that sure will make you appreciate your goddamn happiness.
We have so much time, yet we rarely see the impending clock. Why indeed are we living our lives not knowing each other, or telling who we love that we love them, or opening our hearts to new loves, or holding on to people who seem too hurt to hold on to their true selves? These questions all popped into my head whilst reading some comments on the site. It saddens me that people take a book and take characters and turn them into words. This happening happened to people. There are kids like Oskar, people like Grandpa who could not get past their fears and tragedies, Grandmothers so loving like Grandma, and Moms who wept all the time but not in front of their kids. These people exist. These people have their own circumstances so how dare you call a book this pure, this outspoken, pretentious and irritating?
You are pretentious and irritating!