What I'm Reading...Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

I just finished Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer.  This is my Book Club's selection for our April meeting.

Set in New York, precocious nine year old, Oskar Schell, is dealing with the death of his father who was killed in the September 11th attacks.  He finds a mysterious key in his father's closet and spends his weekends traipsing around New York trying to find the lock it belongs to, all the while hoping to make some sense of his father's death.  Intertwined with this story is that of his paternal grandparents who survived the WWII bombing of Dresden Germany by the Allies.

I thought this was a pretty descent book, but I in no way loved it.  I enjoyed the journey Oskar took in finding the lock to the key and all the people he met along the way, especially his upstairs neighbor.  Unfortunately, I was probably as underwhelmed as he was to discover what the key actually unlocked.  Also, I couldn't get over the fact that this nine year old kid was running all over New York City by himself.

Then his mother, who was barely present in the book, ended up being a main part of the ending.  That surprised me since the book focused so heavily on the grandparents' story.  I thought the two stories would somehow find each other more than they did.  In fact, the grandparents' story, which I thought was really strange by the way, was kind of left unresolved.

The author also uses a lot of gimmick writing and pictures which was different; not bad, just different.  The story was told through first person narrative and also through letters.  His writing style also jumbled conversations into one paragraph, so I sometimes would get confused as to which character was saying what.

I did really like Oskar though, so he totally made the book for me.  He was such a funny, nerdy little kid, and his dad was the one person he could really relate to.  I felt so bad for him.  Things like 9-11 or Hurricane Katrina were so horrific when they happened.  I think being so far removed from them here in the Midwest that we forget there are people still dealing with the aftereffects years later and for the rest of their lives really.  Even though this was a novel, I think it is always good to hear a personal story from events like these to keep them alive in your thoughts.

***It appears they are making this book into a movie, as I just saw online that Sandra Bullock was in New York filming it.  I'm guessing she is probably Oskar's mom??  Tom Hanks is in it too (Oskar's dad??).  If that's who they're playing they are not at all how I pictured them in the book.***