This month genre X is delving into the very contemporary world of Jonathan Safran Foer. It’s hard to believe Foer’s literary career began less than a decade ago with the publication of his critically acclaimed debut novel, Everything is Illuminated. However, rather than discuss the book that put him on the veritable map, we’ve decided to explore his sophomore and sometimes less favorably reviewed novel, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is a post 9/11 look at the boroughs of New York as discovered by nine-year-old Oskar Schell who lost his father in the World Trade Center collapse. Read the complete review from Publisher’s Weekly:

Oskar Schell, hero of this brilliant follow-up to Foer’s bestselling Everything Is Illuminated, is a nine-year-old amateur inventor, jewelry designer, astrophysicist, tambourine player and pacifist. Like the second-language narrator of Illuminated, Oskar turns his naïvely precocious vocabulary to the understanding of historical tragedy, as he searches New York for the lock that matches a mysterious key left by his father when he was killed in the September 11 attacks, a quest that intertwines with the story of his grandparents, whose lives were blighted by the firebombing of Dresden. Foer embellishes the narrative with evocative graphics, including photographs, colored highlights and passages of illegibly overwritten text, and takes his unique flair for the poetry of miscommunication to occasionally gimmicky lengths, like a two-page soliloquy written entirely in numerical code. Although not quite the comic tour de force that Illuminated was, the novel is replete with hilarious and appalling passages. It’s more of a challenge to play in the same way with the very recent collapse of the towers, but Foer gambles on the power of his protagonist’s voice to transform the cataclysm from raw current event to a tragedy at once visceral and mythical. Unafraid to show his traumatized characters’ constant groping for emotional catharsis, Foer demonstrates once again that he is one of the few contemporary writers willing to risk sentimentalism in order to address great questions of truth, love and beauty.

Just for fun, long time genre Xers should note: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close was published in 2005 – the very same year Foer’s then newlywed wife, Nicole Krauss, published The History of Love (as previously discussed by genre X). It’s likely you will not need to look hard to find more than a few similarities in the two stories. Ain’t love grand?

Copies of Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close are available at the 2nd Floor Adult & Teen Services desk at the Main Library. We hope you’ll grab one, delve in and join us in discussing the novel – and maybe Foer himself, but just a little – on Tuesday, August 23rd, at 8pm, at Molly Malones in Forest Park. Hope to see you then!