Hello, everyone!
This blog post was supposed to be the second report about my pleasure reading progress, but actually, it would be the first one as I have chosen another book. After our discussion in class, I realized that it hadn’t been a very good idea to choose “And Then There Were None” by Agatha Christie because it doesn’t contain issues, connected with American history or culture. But who doesn’t make mistakes, right? Having talked to Larisa, I got a desire to read “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” by Jonathan Safran Foer. Larisa was a success in attracting my attention to the plot, so I couldn’t help but start reading it.
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is a novel by Jonathan Safran Foer published in 2005. Jonathan Foer is an American novelist. He teaches creative writing at New York University. He is known for his novels Everything Is Illuminated (2002), Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2005), Here I Am (2016), and for his non-fiction works Eating Animals (2009) and We Are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast (2019). The book’s narrator is a nine-year-old boy named Oskar Schell. In the story, a year after Oskar’s father was killed in the September 11 attacks, the boy discovers his father’s key in a vase. The discovery inspires Oskar to search all around New York for information about the key.
The author’s style of writing is extraordinary as the book contains a lot of pictures; some pages have just one or a couple of words on them; some words are written like XXXXX, etc. It’s not always clear what these things mean, but they don’t influence the understanding of the book by a reader. Such style provokes readers to think more about the message, hidden behind these unusual stylistic devices. Undoubtedly, these remarks also show that the boy’s mental health is at stake after his father’s death. Despite this, I can say that I like a lot the main character of the book. He is so young but very smart and intelligent for his age. Oscar knows many various things from different areas, he is a very curious boy, and he is not afraid of difficulties. I’m amazed by how easily he starts a conversation with adults, and how stubborn he is when it comes to pursuing his aim. I’m very excited about how the plot will be developing.
