extremely loud and incredibly close book

She had been calling ahead all the people he contacted, and that is why they all greeted him kindly and gave him information. Oskar destroys everything he owns pertaining to the search, but then finds out that his mother actually knew about the search all along. Realizing that the key doesn’t belong to him after all, he tells William the secret of the message he has kept on the machine all this home before giving him the key, and returns home dejected. The key is to a self-deposit box that was sold to Oskar’s father at an estate sale. When Oskar seeks out William Black, he finds out that the key once belonged to William’s father. Abby tells him that she wasn’t honest with him and that her ex-husband, William Black might be able to help. It’s revealed that he keeps a message with his father’s last words on this machine as well, and as such he’s been afraid to touch it for fear of erasing it. The message was actually from right after he first talked to her, but he hasn’t touched the machine. As Oskar continues his search for months, one day he finds a phone call from Abby on the answering machine. Letters from Oskar’s grandmother to Oskar are also included. Unbeknownst to Oskar, the renter is actually his grandfather, who has his story told in a parallel narrative in the format of letters to his son, explaining his past in World War II, his first love who he lost in the Dresden fire-bombings, and his later marriage to Oskar’s grandmother. He had only heard of this man until now from his grandmother, who referred to him as the new tenant in her building.

As he continues to search the city, he meets an old man who he nicknames “the renter”. He befriends an older woman named Abby Black, but she has no information. Oskar becomes obsessed with finding out about the key and calls every person in the phonebook with the last name Black. One day, he finds a key in an envelope in a vase he accidentally breaks, with the word “Black” on the envelope. When the novel begins, it has been a year since Oskar’s father was killed, and Oskar suffers from depression, insomnia, and panic attacks.

Exploring themes of loss, grief, and the historic impact of both 9/11 and the Holocaust, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close was critically acclaimed albeit somewhat divisive, and was adapted into an Oscar-nominated film directed by Stephen Daldry and starring Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock. When Oskar discovers a mysterious key that belonged to his late father, he embarks on a search around New York to discover the truth. Focusing on a nine-year-old boy named Oskar Schell who is implied to have Asperger’s Syndrome, the story takes place a year after the boy’s father was killed in the September 11 terrorist attacks. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is a 2005 novel by Jonathan Safran Foer.

Extremely loud and incredibly close book