Review of 'Extremely loud & incredibly close' on 'Storygraph'
5 stars
September 11th forms the backdrop for this honest examination of love and loss. In the case of many contemporary novels, that last sentence would have ended "love, loss and redemption," but here there is no single, easy moment of salvation, acceptance or understanding. While the novel contains all of those things, each of the characters has to work continually in order to achieve them.
If that sounds depressing, I promise you it isn't. These characters never fully recover from their loss; they deal with it from day to day. They think about it, write about it, travel with it, ignore it, run away from it and return to it. Foer has managed to turn this struggle into something extraordinarily beautiful, while recognizing that it is also extraordinarily difficult.
September 11th forms the backdrop for this honest examination of love and loss. In the case of many contemporary novels, that last sentence would have ended "love, loss and redemption," but here there is no single, easy moment of salvation, acceptance or understanding. While the novel contains all of those things, each of the characters has to work continually in order to achieve them.
If that sounds depressing, I promise you it isn't. These characters never fully recover from their loss; they deal with it from day to day. They think about it, write about it, travel with it, ignore it, run away from it and return to it. Foer has managed to turn this struggle into something extraordinarily beautiful, while recognizing that it is also extraordinarily difficult.
