Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle. Learn more

Vous voulez voir cette page en français ? Cliquez ici.


or
Sign in to turn on 1-Click ordering.
or
Amazon Prime Free Trial required. Sign up when you check out. Learn More
More Buying Choices
Have one to sell? Sell yours here
Publisher: learn how customers can search inside this book.
Start reading Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel on your Kindle in under a minute.

Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here, or download a FREE Kindle Reading App.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel [Hardcover]

Jonathan Safran Foer (Author)
3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
List Price: CDN$ 31.50
Price: CDN$ 19.85 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over CDN$ 25. Details
You Save: CDN$ 11.65 (37%)
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
Only 3 left in stock (more on the way).
Ships from and sold by Amazon.ca. Gift-wrap available.
Want it delivered Wednesday, May 22? Choose One-Day Shipping at checkout.

Formats

 Amazon Price New from Used from
Kindle Edition CDN $7.10   -- --
Hardcover CDN $19.85   -- --
Paperback, Bargain Price CDN $7.58   -- --
Audio, CD --   -- --

Book Description

Publication Date: Mar 7 2005
Jonathan Safran Foer emerged as one of the most original writers of his generation with his best-selling debut novel, Everything Is Illuminated. Now, with humor, tenderness, and awe, he confronts the traumas of our recent history.

Nine-year-old Oskar Schell has embarked on an urgent, secret mission that will take him through the five boroughs of New York. His goal is to find the lock that matches a mysterious key that belonged to his father, who died in the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11. This seemingly impossible task will bring Oskar into contact with survivors of all sorts on an exhilarating, affecting, often hilarious, and ultimately healing journey.

Frequently Bought Together

Customers buy this book with The Help by Kathryn Stockett Paperback CDN$ 13.36

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel + The Help
Price For Both: CDN$ 33.21

Show availability and shipping details

  • This item: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel by Jonathan Safran Foer Hardcover

    In Stock.
    Ships from and sold by Amazon.ca.
    Eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over CDN$ 25. Details

  • The Help by Kathryn Stockett Paperback

    In Stock.
    Ships from and sold by Amazon.ca.
    Eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over CDN$ 25. Details

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

Product Details

Product Description

From Publishers 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, as when, during show-and-tell, Oskar plays a harrowing recording by a Hiroshima survivor and then launches into a Poindexterish disquisition on the bomb's "charring effect." 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.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From School Library Journal

Adult/High School-Oskar Schell is not your average nine-year-old. A budding inventor, he spends his time imagining wonderful creations. He also collects random photographs for his scrapbook and sends letters to scientists. When his father dies in the World Trade Center collapse, Oskar shifts his boundless energy to a quest for answers. He finds a key hidden in his father's things that doesn't fit any lock in their New York City apartment; its container is labeled "Black." Using flawless kid logic, Oskar sets out to speak to everyone in New York City with the last name of Black. A retired journalist who keeps a card catalog with entries for everyone he's ever met is just one of the colorful characters the boy meets. As in Everything Is Illuminated (Houghton, 2002), Foer takes a dark subject and works in offbeat humor with puns and wordplay. But Extremely Loud pushes further with the inclusion of photographs, illustrations, and mild experiments in typography reminiscent of Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions (Dell, 1973). The humor works as a deceptive, glitzy cover for a fairly serious tale about loss and recovery. For balance, Foer includes the subplot of Oskar's grandfather, who survived the World War II bombing of Dresden. Although this story is not quite as evocative as Oskar's, it does carry forward and connect firmly to the rest of the novel. The two stories finally intersect in a powerful conclusion that will make even the most jaded hearts fall.-Matthew L. Moffett, Northern Virginia Community College, Annandale
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
See all Product Description

What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?

› Explore similar items

Customer Reviews

Most helpful customer reviews
11 of 13 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars "It's always necessary" Jun 15 2006
By J. Borhi
Format:Paperback
This is a beautifully written book about loss & recovery, and expression & humanity within relationships. The way we do & do not communicate with each other. The last few chapters & the ending will pull you by the heart & will not ask for mercy, it is so fulfilling.

There are two types of books: when finished a book & someone asks you how it was, you tell them what it was about; the second type of book, when finished, you can only describe how it made you feel.

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is the latter.
Was this review helpful to you?
Yes
No
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars The book is good but the movie is better Dec 28 2012
By Barry Francis
Format:Paperback
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer, is incredibly close to being a great read. The plot is imaginative and both funny and sad at the same time. Although highly compelling, the book falls short in its excessively lengthy and complex story line which would have benefited from some skillful editing.

The main character is nine-year-old Oskar Schell, a whip-smart boy whose father died in the world trade center on 9-11. Oskar has an especially close relationship with his father, who may suspect his child has Asperger's Syndrome, and stimulates him with challenges, puzzles and mysteries.

An aspiring inventor, Oskar imagines amazing creations, collects random photographs for his scrapbook and sends numerous letters to famous scientists, including Stephen Hawking.

Let off school early on that fateful day, Oskar cannot bear to pick up the phone for his father's last desperate calls which are recorded on the family answering machine. Driven by guilt and sadness, he hides the machine from his mother. In the aftermath, he finds a key hidden in his father's things in an envelope marked "Black."

Believing that the key will somehow unlock a mystery devised by his late father, Oskar sets out to speak to everyone in New York named Black, aided by his mute grandfather (a survivor of the WWII bombing of Dresden). His goal is to find the lock that matches that mysterious key.

Using a complex indexing system that he devises, he undertakes this seemingly impossible task that brings him into contact with a range of interesting people in an exhilarating, often hilarious, and ultimately healing odyssey.

Some reviewers think the book is exploitive of the 911 tragedy. I don't. The incredible trauma caused by that event is an essential element of the plot.

My advice: If you like the book, see the movie. It's what the book could have been.

Barry Francis
Was this review helpful to you?
Yes
No
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Imaginative and wide in scope and emotion Aug 23 2009
By J. Tobin Garrett TOP 500 REVIEWER
Format:Paperback
As with Foer's first novel, Everything is Illuminated, he uses multi-character narratives and weaves them together to create a disorienting, but ultimately connected set of stories that culminate in a great ending. Although some may call Foer's writing gimmicky with its use of letters, historical bending, images, and stylistic flourishes, he manages to use these for a purpose rather than simply as a way to show off his Writing 101 skills. I'm not sure if he can sustain this for a third novel, as it would be nice to see him evolve.

The story follows the aftermath of a boy who loses his father in the 9/11 towers, but also includes scenes from WW2 and the history of the boy's family. The boy finds a key from his late father and goes in search of what the key opens. In this way the story has elements of a mystery, kind of an elementary detective story with a child as the protagonist. We meet a huge cast of quirky and oddball characters, who have charming conversations and strange personalities. Reading this novel is like piecing a puzzle together, where in the beginning there are so many pieces that you're sure they can't all belong to the same puzzle image, but sure enough as you piece them together and keep going a strong and united image emerges.

A better novel than his first one, I would say. More daring and authentic. Heartbreaking as well as hilariously funny in parts. It has been a novel I have thought about well after finishing it, and I'm sure I'll read it again one day.
Was this review helpful to you?
Yes
No
Want to see more reviews on this item?
Most recent customer reviews
2.0 out of 5 stars Precious, overly amused with itself
September 11th and the Holocaust are two subjects that are easy use if you are an author looking to add emotional weight to your novel, but are difficult to use well. Read more
Published 16 months ago by Mary Lavers
4.0 out of 5 stars Moving
The story relates the effort of a nine year old boy in finding information on a key left by his father, who died in the 9/11 attacks. Read more
Published on Feb 1 2011 by S. Lavigne
5.0 out of 5 stars A Must Read
Safran Foer is one of today's finest writers. The voice of Oscar in this novel is at once true and endearing. Read more
Published on Jan 14 2011 by Jennifer A. Kirkwood
4.0 out of 5 stars Perfect
One of the only books that I've shed tears to. Oskar's adventurous proclivities and over-sensitivities are perfectly patched together with NYC and its 9/11 wounds.
Published on Aug 21 2010 by SBuckle
5.0 out of 5 stars Sadly Hilarious
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close was a book I picked up and put back in bookstores several times before a well-timed stint with the flu created the opportunity (ie: time and... Read more
Published on April 16 2009 by A Good Read
5.0 out of 5 stars My favourite book of all time
I had to read this book for a english class on the fiction of 9/11. I fell in love with it. I am an avid reader and I have yet to read a book that has moved me like this one has. Read more
Published on Feb 17 2009 by Heidi Murphy
4.0 out of 5 stars Another demonstration of Foer's skill.
There's a lot to be said for an author like Jonathan Safran Foer, who (if his first two novels are any indication) can break a reader's heart times over and rebuild it with the... Read more
Published on May 10 2008 by The Rogue Ninja
4.0 out of 5 stars Has its place
By this same author who wrote EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED, comes a tale that just had to be told. I can only imagine that critics who have called EXTREMELY LOUD exploitative or... Read more
Published on July 23 2007 by Barry Zebrowski
4.0 out of 5 stars Extremely close
Sometimes an author has a theme running through all of his writing -- in the case of Jonathan Safran Foer, it seems to be a quest of the soul. Read more
Published on Mar 25 2007 by E. A Solinas
4.0 out of 5 stars My recent Amazon purchase
I purchased this book, along with the book ME TALK PRETTY by Sedaris, and loved them both. Oskar is the protaginist in this compelling novel by Foer, the author that gave us... Read more
Published on Jan 28 2007 by H. MIller
Search Customer Reviews
Only search this product's reviews

    Your Shopping Cart is empty.

    Give it purpose—fill it with books, DVDs, clothes, electronics, and more.

    If you already have an account, sign in.

    View Cart (0 items)

      Listmania!

      Create a Listmania! list

      Look for similar items by category

      Feedback

      Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?

      Amazon.ca Privacy Statement Amazon.ca Shipping Information Amazon.ca Returns & Exchanges