My thoughts on Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
I give this book a B+ overall. I’m going to recommend this book highly to my mother, if not buy her a copy. It’s a great book if you don’t read a lot of postmodern and/or “difficult” fiction. People who read regularly but avoid “difficult” stuff in favor of pageturners will probably still enjoy this, and people like my mom who love anything dramatic, emotional and uplifting will love this book, and complain that I didn’t give it a higher grade.
For those who are conversant with stuff like DFW, Vollmann, Pynchon, Delillo, etc., your mileage may vary (but I’d give it a B- or C+ on those terms - I found the writing to be a little bit less than that of Eggers, who is so polarizing that he’s probably a horrible example). I found the writing style, story and characters to be just a bit too precious, and this often took me out of the story. I also felt a bit manipulated at certain emotional moments - not the hamfisted (yet annoyingly effective) emotional manipulation of something like Forrest Gump, but something more subtle and equally effective. But most of the time, the story was engrossing and moved along well. One of my friends is a high school teacher, and it’s obviously a great book for younger readers.
