Book talk on "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close"

Some of you have already seen this, but for everyone else, this is my book talk on "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close." Keep in mind that a book talk is different from a review in that a book talk is not overtly critical. It's a talk from a librarian meant to get patrons interested in reading a particular book.

Librarians, feel free to use this book talk yourself if you feel so moved.

Audience: Book talk at main library for "Book Group Night," for book groups looking for new ideas about novels to read.

Nine-year-old Oskar Schell lives in New York City. In his spare time, he likes to write letters to famous people, play the tambourine, and think up new ideas for inventions to save people's lives. But Oskar also had days when he's very sad, or as he puts it, he has "heavy boots." His father died in the World Trade Towers on 9/11, and Oskar is keeping a secret from his mother and grandmother about one of his memories of that day. Months after the tragedy, Oskar finds a key among his father's things in an envelope marked "Black." He's instantly convinced that if he can find whatever the key opens, he will find something wonderful. He decides its his mission to visit every person in New York City with the last name of Black to see if they know what the key opens.

So begins "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close," by Jonathan Safran Foer. This is a novel for people who don't mind serious topics, but also enjoy a sense of the fantastic. Foer likes to throw in things that make a reader think, "That couldn't really happen, could it?" Perspectives shift -- sometimes Oskars' grandparents tell the story. The author also experiments with typography. One character literally circles words in the book in red, for example, and we see the red circles on the page.

Foer's first novel was the critically acclaimed "Everything is Illuminated," a novel about an author named Jonathan Safran Foer who travels to the Ukraine to find the village where his Jewish relatives lived before they died in the Holocaust. ("Everything is Illuminated" became a film you may remember starring Elijah Wood.)

Foer's work tends to get strong reactions from readers. Some people think of him as a "love him or hate him" kind of writer. About his work, Foer himself says, "Books make people less alone. That, before and after everything else, is what books do. They show us that conversations are possible across distances.''

If you like adventurous fiction about important world events, you will like "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close," by Jonathan Safran Foer.