BOOK: Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

This is a book you won't soon forget.

I bought it for the plane coming home from Italy, but I couldn't finish reading it on the plane, because the book is about planes, and not in a good way.

It's also (mostly) about a 8-year old boy named Oskar who is the most interesting, most complex, most sensitive, most intelligent little boy you'll ever read about.

He lives on the Upper West Side in Manhattan, with his mother. His grandmother lives across the street. His father died in 9/11, and this book is about Oskar's mourning process, though he does not know it. You'll know it, from the perspective of an adult. You'll know it, silently, reading about his adventures, your heart breaking, knowing that the reason he is on this nonsensical journey, is because he is searching for what he has already lost forever.

I don't know how Foer does it. His writing is so detailed. Everything eventually connects in ways that you won't see coming. If you reach a point that makes you wonder why it's even in the book, that's probably the moment you should pay the closest attention. The book isn't just A BOOK. It's got pictures, pages and pages of photographs, as though the story could not be told with words alone. It plays with the page margins, the font kearning, the space between the lines. This is NOT a normal book and it is beautiful.

A few months ago I was lucky enough to hear Foer do a reading at a public event. At that point, I had never read any of his books, and didn't really have plans to. But he's a young, 30-something from Brooklyn, and he's an up-and-coming author (more like an up-and-already-arrived) and he is married to my favorite author ever, Nicole Kraus, whom I was secretly hoping would be there.

He did a reading of something he was working on, which no one had heard before, and which may or may not reach the public one day. It was so funny and brilliant and had the whole audience crying with laughter. That seemed to put his "voice" in my head, so when I began EXTREMELY LOUD & INCREDIBLY CLOSE I could "hear" how it was supposed to be read, and that made the melody of the book so much more enjoyable.

I finished it last night with tears in my eyes and a deep sigh. Another book that took my breath away.