#15

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer is book #15 for the year.  Really interesting book.  I've actually "checked it out" from the digital library twice...and didn't get around to reading it until the second time.  It's intense.  It centers around a father/son who is killed in the World Trade Center on September 11.  But it starts with World War 2 in Germany.  The main character is Oskar ~ the son of the man killed ~ who is living with secrets and lies...and discovers that all people are living with secrets and lies.  Oskar is an odd little duck {certainly living on the autism spectrum, if you ask me}  He has the best observations on the world.  He constantly refers to being sad as having heavy boots ~ and isn't that how feeling sad really FEELS?  All of his idiosyncrasies come out in the story, and he is so lovable.  There's also the parallel story of the father of the man killed and his mother ~ this is the story that stretches back to Germany.  This story is harder for me to follow ~ are there things that time can not make better?  I certainly hope I never have to answer that question for myself!
The question asked over and over in this novel: What is Living and what is just existing?
This would be a great book club book.
Quotes:
p71 ~ That secret was a hole in the middle of me that every happy thing fell into.

p88 ~ I shook my tambourine the whole time, because it helped me remember that even though I was going through different neighborhoods, I was still me.

p156 ~ "It's not a horrible world," he told me, putting a Cambodian mask on his face, "bu it's filled with a lot of horrible people."

p161 ~ "Which was your last war?" He said, "Cutting down that tree was my last war!"  I asked him who won, which I thought was a nice question, because it would let him say that he won, and feel proud.  He said, "The ax won! It's always that way!"

fl: What about a teakettle?  What if the spout opened and closed when the steam came out, so it would become a mouth, and it could whistle pretty melodies, or do Shakespeare, or just crack up with me?  ll: He would have told me the story of the Sixth Borough, from the voice in the can at the end to the beginning, from "I love you" to "Once upon a time..."  We would have been safe.  {and then there are 15 pictures of a man falling up into the World Trade Center}