Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

This is one of rare times I actually read a new book, one that's on the bestseller list and all. I bought it in San Francisco to occupy the flight back from R*'s wedding. I had read the first page and found it charming.

The main character is a boy whose father was lost in 911. And then there's an old man, who has lost the ability to speak. Their stories are interwoven. I've always thought that kids who grow up in New York City are strange little hot-house flowers, and this kid is one for sure. He has incredible creativity and yet it is all strange. His ways of playing and of thinking are delightful but peculiar, almost decadently evolved but never mature. He is grieving but rejects the ordinary methods of dealing with that; instead, his quixotic quest is his way of dealing with losing his father and with the terrible secret he has about that day.

I have to warn you now that the book is not as long as it looks. Lots of strange graphical gimmicks. Blank pages, single sentence pages, unreadable pages, number pages, photos, colors, stuff like that. It's not as aggressively annoyingly pomo as it could be, though I was mildly annoyed. It is meant to give the texture of real life, to let you see more clearly through the characters' eyes, to make it feel documentary. Anyway, I liked the book overall and it even made me cry, which doesn't happen too often. I'd recommend it to anyone, but I probably wouldn't read it again. Many of the effects depend on unexpectedness (try to avoid spoilers!).