Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
by Jonathan Safran Foer

Foer's second novel is disjointed, but it ultimately pulls mostly together and rewards close attention. Told in three voices, like his previous novel, my favorite was the precocious kid who is trying to unlock the mysteries of his dead father's life. The novel's other lines were harder to follow—because they were written in stream-of-consciousness and were also less compelling—but ultimately they all tie together in a neat package. (I'm sure it would all be tighter on a second read, but I rarely read a book twice.) Some might think some of it too cute, but I applaud Foer for tackling the sitcky topic of how people cope with the fallout of 9/11.