I have never been this happy to finish a book. I have just finished reading Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. I didn’t like this book because it was so confusing to read. It is written in a train of thought which means it follows the way of Oskar’s thinking so it was more like an unfinished book. It seemed at times to be rambling of thoughts rather than a story. This book did get a little better at the end as Foer started to wrap things up.
While I didn’t care for reading the book much, I did like to see the character, Oskar, change a lot during it. During the story he goes from a depressed boy to a mature young man. In the beginning of the story he appears depressed and misses some school, doesn’t want his mom to love again, seems to always be feuding with his mom and he is afraid of what might happen next. I bet many people who lost someone on 9/11 very close to them felt the same way as Oskar did.
During the book he matures and realizes that life must go on. He goes back to school and thinks it will be okay if his mother finds someone else to love. He starts to live the way he thinks his father would want him to live. I think his travels through New York, looking for the owner of the key, helped him a great deal to mature. If nothing else he learned to think things through before he acts and have a plan and he should have done his search systematically. This could be a lesson everyone should learn at one point or another.
Life is like a roller coaster, there are ups and downs. I am glad that Oskar didn’t let this down ruin his whole life because after life goes down it must go up again. Even though I am happy to see Oskar grow and change, I don’t think I will be reading, Everything is Illuminated, another book by Foer.
