Extrem laut und unglaublich nah (Gekürzte Fassung)

Geschrieben von Jonathan Safran Foer

Erzählt von Alexander Khuon

Oskar ist neun, er ist Erfinder, Pazifist, Schmuckdesigner und Tamburinspieler - und er hat eine Menge Fragen, auf die er dringend eine Antwort braucht. Wieso gab es den Anschlag vom 11. September? Warum musste sein Vater eines der Opfer sein? Oskar läuft durch New York, immer auf der Suche nach Antworten und nach etwas, dass ihn von den vielen Gedanken in seinem Kopf ablenkt. Safran Foer raubt mit seinem Tempo, seiner Sprachgewalt und seinem halsbrecherischen Witz dem Hörer den Atem. Und er lässt einen verstehen, dass manchmal nur Phantasie hilft, den Irrsinn der Welt zu ertragen.

• Sprache: Deutsch
• Herausgeber: Argon Verlag
• Erscheinungsdatum: 23. Aug. 2012
• ISBN: 9783839890684

Rezensionen für Extrem laut und unglaublich nah (Gekürzte Fassung)

[liveshipvivacia · Bewertung: 5 von 5 Sternen]

It's okay. I didn't need my eyes to do anything but cry today.

A very touching novel that is a little hard to get into. At the beginning, I almost gave up because of the disparate narrators. There are three, but two of them seem similar at first blush. After I got into it, though, it became very poignant, though difficult to get through. However, it was a quicker read than I'd like...

[suziere · Bewertung: 3 von 5 Sternen]

It was a bit hard to follow with flashbacks and different narrators. Realistic presentation of effects of trauma on a child.

[jonbrammer-788089 · Bewertung: 2 von 5 Sternen]

I have to agree with some of the complaints that this book is gimmicky. I think Foer has a lot of ambition and was trying to write approach 9/11 with sensitivity and artfulness. It is telling, however, that the two most moving images in the book - the flipbook of the person falling into the World Trade Center, and the narrative of the father in Hiroshima after the bombing - are not Foer's work, the latter sounding like it was lifted in whole cloth from John Hersey's "Hiroshima".

Oskar, our protagonist, is nothing but a collection of verbal tics. "Jose", "heavy boots", "googolplex", etc. What starts out as cute quickly becomes grating. The reader is left spending too much time puzzling over minor mysteries - why does the grandfather have yes and no tattooed on his hands when it would be simpler just to nod or shake his head? - and not enough time actually caring about the characters. I found Oskar's mother to be the most sympathetic character, but she gets far too little attention.

[castlelass · Bewertung: 3 von 5 Sternen]

Narrated by precocious nine-year-old Oskar Schell, this book relates his journey to express grief for his father, who died in the 9-11 attacks on the World Trade Center. After finding a key in his father’s closet, Oskar embarks upon a quest to locate what it opens, symbolically paying tribute to his father's life while also helping him heal. An intertwined story tells of Oskar's grandparents' difficult lives after surviving the bombing of Dresden during World War II. Their stories involve letters written from Oskar’s grandfather to his father and from Oskar’s grandmother to Oskar. Themes include the silence of suffering, the impact of trauma, and how difficult it can be to overcome.

This is another book where I can appreciate its artistry but is not a particularly enjoyable reading experience. I thought Oskar’s story, though it stretches the limits of belief, was touching. I felt compassion for the child who has suddenly lost his father and describes what is obviously depression as “heavy boots.” It hits very close to home for me. However, I found the grandparents’ storylines disjointed and difficult to follow. The chapters narrated by Oskar are the strongest and most direct, though his voice is much more analytical and mature than a typical child. There were many interesting parallels between the experiences of Oskar and his grandfather. The tone is very sad and there are many loose ends.

I think the overall impression of this book is more effective than the individual parts. It would be a good book to read with another person or as part of a book club.

[sparemethecensor · Bewertung: 3 von 5 Sternen]

A bit too precious (narrator's voice) for my taste given the subject matter (9/11).

[browner56 · Bewertung: 4 von 5 Sternen]

Oskar Schell was seven years old when his father Thomas was killed in the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center. Two years later, Oskar is still struggling with that loss as well as some secrets he has kept buried deeply inside himself. He is also an extremely bright boy—overly precocious, really—but suffers from a variety of social maladies, including the inability to fit in well with his colleagues at school. When he discovers a strange key marked only with the name ‘Black’ that his father had hidden in his closet before he died, Oskar embarks on a months-long journey across the five boroughs of New York City to solve the mystery and bring closure to the grief that he, his widowed mother, and paternal grandparents are feeling at their collective tragedy. That quest and what he finds at the end provide the emotional impact of the story.Published in 2005, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close stands as one of the first literary attempts to reconcile and explain the consequences of the events that took place during that horrific time in our history. In that effort, the novel succeeds remarkably well. The author made the wise choice of focusing the story not on the fateful day itself, but on the aftermath that the surviving loved ones of those killed had to live through. The emotions generated by Oskar and his relatives were raw, real, and deeply affecting. On the other hand, the book is less successful in relating the specifics of the Schell family’s story, which is told in terms that are too sentimental (if that is actually possible, given the topic). Further, Oskar often comes across as unbelievably glib and contrived, while his grandmother’s entire backstory is convoluted and largely unnecessary to the novel’s main goal. On balance, then, I found this to be a book with an important message to convey but one in which the storytelling was unfortunately flawed.

[sami7-951065 · Bewertung: 5 von 5 Sternen]

Beautiful and weird in a very good way.

She lived for nothing more than living, with nothing to get inspired by, to care for, to call her own.
Thinking would keep me alive. But now I am alive, and thinking is killing me. I think and think and think.
No, Oskar, that's her museum. Mine's in the other room.

[jayeless-698797 · Bewertung: 1 von 5 Sternen]

Considering how much I loved Everything is Illuminated, I was really, really disappointed with this one. It's incredibly pretentious. Not a lot really happens. The characters didn't feel like characters, but like plot devices. I found the main character, nine-year-old Oskar Schell, kind of cringeworthy. I thought that the subplot about his grandparents' story was much better, but it was similar to the backstory in Everything is Illuminated which was much, much better. I just think having a character who refuses to speak and writes everything everywhere is really gimmicky. One of my grandmothers died when I was seven, and because she had motor neuron disease, I can't remember her saying a word – she, too, wrote everything in notebooks. But those notebooks never overflowed in the house. I'm not sure where I'm going with this tangent, except that this grandfather character seemed like an insult to my intelligence.

I didn't hate the book, but I thought it was very mediocre. Mostly, it thought it was way deeper and more insightful than it really was. I don't even know what it was trying to say – "when people die, you need to move on," I guess. But considering that's all it's trying to say, the dozens and dozens of pages devoted to Oskar searching for the lock that can be opened by this key he found is really annoying.

Hmm, I was going to rate this two stars, but typing this up has made me reconsider. I didn't hate it, but I certainly did not like it, and apparently "one star" encompasses that! So yeah. My advice – read Everything is Illuminated for sure. But skip this. The other book will just get your hopes up, when this is a big let-down.

PS: the exception to the above is Oskar's letter to his French teacher, pretending to be his mother and cancelling his lessons. That cracked me up. His mother apparently never even cares that she's paying for French lessons he doesn't go to though, which is kind of indicative of this book in general.

[lorikboyd · Bewertung: 1 von 5 Sternen]

Took me over 2 months to read and retread 80 pages. Could not get into it. Passed it on to a friend...hope she has better luck!

[sandrabrower · Bewertung: 5 von 5 Sternen]

I've falling in love with a boy that has the biggest ideas ever! Oskar jumped off the pages and into my life faster than I could say, "whoa".
I don't own this book, but I now have to purchase it so I can keep it close.

As I have been reading, I have realized that I feel as Oskar does, I have "heavy boots".

I didn't want the book to end. This book has had me scribbling in my writing journal, my gratitude journal and in a letter I wrote to my friend who past away. Its myriad of emotions had me in tears when Oskar found his father's penmanship at the art shop. Laughing when he read his grandma's memories of meeting his grandfather and more tears when I realized that his mother and he didn't have the same relationship that he and his father did and now he only had her to talk to.

“…sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all of the lives I’m not living.” Thomas Schell sr. This quote really touched my heart. How many lives am I not living?

"Heavy Boots" indeed.

[cyderry · Bewertung: 1 von 5 Sternen]

My book club selected this book for September because of its connection with 9/11 so I thought it would be interested. However, the writing was so choppy and disjointed that I was unable to finish reading it. The characters, IMO, were too strange it seemed as if the author was trying to make this book and its characters unlikable.I abandoned it halfway through because I really didn't like the writing style, someone else might.

[snash_44 · Bewertung: 4 von 5 Sternen]

Written somewhere close to stream of consciousness, the book is about grief and the near impossibility of dealing with loss. While it manages to create humorous scenes, every person involved in the story is dealing with loss.

[beth.clarke · Bewertung: 4 von 5 Sternen]

The book was strange, but I like that. I'm not sure that taking place after 9/11 was key to the story. I think it's what the reader brings to the book. My impression is that Oskar, the nine year old that tells the story, has Asperger's Syndrome. He doesn't know how to handle his father's death, so he tries to make order out of something that can't ever make sense. The interactions with his neighbors, mom, grandma, and grandpa are what make the book extraordinary. I loved it. I found myself laughing with him, feeling hopeless, anxious, scared - I understood this character. I wanted to hug him. Typically, I don't get emotional over a story, but this one tugged at my heart. I don't think it's a book everyone would love, but if you like complex and challenging story lines, it may be for you, too.

[liscarey · Bewertung: 5 von 5 Sternen]

Oskar Schell is a nine-year-old boy living in New York City, and trying to cope with the terrible loss of his father in the Twin Towers on 9/11.

Shortly after that horrible day, Oskar finds an odd-looking key in a vase stored on a closet shelf. It's inside an envelope, on which someone has written one word: Black. He seizes on this, and decides that he has to find the lock that the key fits, to learn something important about his father. Concluding that "Black" must be a person's name, Oskar sets out to meet every person in New York City with the last name of Black, and find out who has the right lock.

In the process, Oskar meets all kinds of people, from an amazing range of backgrounds. But in between Oskar's adventures, we learn the stories of Oskar's grandmother, and his grandfather, the husband who left her forty years ago, for reasons he never explained. As the three Schells tell us their stories, a fascinating family history unfolds, and we explore complex and multilayered relationships. Further layered in are Oskar's memories of his father, and the games and stories his father shared with him.

Oskar is smart, lonely, grieving, and coping in his own way, which is often baffling to the adults around him. That's perhaps only fair, since their ways of coping baffle him, too. He's an interesting and likable kid, and anyone who has lost a parent too young, or survived the events of 9/11 will relate to him. I'm very glad I finally stumbled across this book; I'm sorry I missed it when it first came out.

Highly recommended.

I bought this book.

[over.the.edge · Bewertung: 3 von 5 Sternen]

Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close: A Novel
By Jonathan Safran For
2005
Houghton Mifflin

Sad.....Brilliant.....Devastating

This book is creative, and thought provoking. It will put you through the cycle of emotions from sad to happy....and everywhere in between. This was a fantastic story of the ll tragedy abd loss of 9/11, and the desperate search for meaning.
Nine year old Oskar Schell lost his father in 9/11, and the devastation of the World Trade Center. After he learns of his father's death, Oskar finds a mysterious unidentified key in the pocket of a coat in his closet, and sets out on a journey that will take him through all 5 boroughs of New York, meeting fasvinating, strange and mundane people, learning of their lives and stories along his way. Oskar is determined to find the lock that opens with this key....he is relentless and obsessed.
Totally recommended.....
This is also a motion picture starring Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock.

[ma_washigeri · Bewertung: 3 von 5 Sternen]

Started well, continued not so well and finished unevenly. There was a sentimentality, particularly with the grandparent voices that alienated me in the end.

[m_mozeleski · Bewertung: 5 von 5 Sternen]

I have read two books by Jonathan Safran Foer. Both have left me in tears.
I don't know why, except sometimes the words were so excruciatingly tender in ways that I don't even know how to describe that it broke my heart to bits.


I will be reading both books again, to be sure. So I can understand them better. So I know why I cried, perhaps.

[sheiladeeth_1 · Bewertung: 5 von 5 Sternen]

When the twin towers fell, a father struggled to leave some kind of message for his family. His young son Oskar didn’t pick up, and so begins a story of hidden memories, lost details, mysterious strangers, and tragedy’s wounds.Other tragedies wounded the world long before 9/11 of course. And other wounded characters wander through this novel, each telling their broken tales, in unsent letters, unread words, unheard tapes and undelivered—even unspoken—love. Coincidences aren’t the only links between these characters, and the story moves forward, driven by a small, intelligent and inventive boy’s desire to discover the truth (and so stop imagining). Meanwhile other truths play out behind him, gradually drawing the threads of a silent man, an unseeing woman, Dresden’s fire and New York’s horror all together. Each character becomes real, despite their difference from the norm. Each voice (even the silent) is perfectly rendered. And the story reads like a voyage of discovery, perfectly timed for the reader to follow along.Told with humor, pathos, angst and delight, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is a cleverly constructed novel of our times, with protagonists who cross city and continents, get stuck in airports, dread tall buildings, know horror and find something approximating love.Disclosure: I borrowed an ecopy. Now I want a real one!

[phyllis2779 · Bewertung: 4 von 5 Sternen]

I enjoyed some parts of this book a lot and others were a little boring. Some things were repetitious and some parts didn't hold my interest. The parts of the book from the boy's POV were the most interesting. The character we didn't find out much about was the mother and I wanted to know more about her. The grandmother and grandfather were somewhat interesting but also kind of a mystery. They seem to do a lot with no income. I found out more about them than I really wanted to know.

[dldbizacct · Bewertung: 5 von 5 Sternen]

Wow. This book is beautiful, painful, haunting, uplifting, powerful -- so many things. The writing is superb, the plot is complex and mesmerising, the characters -- you just fall in love with them. This is a book that will stay with me a long time.

[emscape · Bewertung: 5 von 5 Sternen]

Young Oskar is traumatized (who wouldn't be?) by the death of his father on 9/11. He finds a key in a jar in his dad's closet and goes on a search around New York for clues as to what it opens. Oskar also seems to have some special needs (autism? aspergers?) and thus, his narration is not necessarily reliable. I was more than a little concerned for Oskar as he traversed NYC ostensibly alone, and knocked on doors of complete strangers in various neighborhoods. Between that and trying to diagnose him (I used to be a social worker), I had a hard time with this at first. However, the story drew me in and forced me to suspend some disbelief as the cast of characters assisted Oskar and his family with their grieving process. I was also compelled, soon after reading, to view the film based on this novel, which was excellent and poignant. This book is extremely touching and incredibly well-written. (Sorry, I couldn't resist).

[pbjwelch · Bewertung: 5 von 5 Sternen]

I rarely read fiction (my forte is history) and especially not books that have strange pages with blots of ink and typographical distortions on them, but I chanced upon this paperback on a 'discarded book' shelf of a ship and opened it to a random page. Others have summarized the story and discussed whether the young hero has Asperger's Syndrome or not and I have little to add to the number of fine reviews here on Goodreads of this incredibly witty and moving book ... except to say that it has forced me to rethink my moratorium on reading fiction. I really never thought that could happen, and it just did.

[dorie.craig · Bewertung: 3 von 5 Sternen]

Oskar is a 9-year old boy whose mission is to find the lock that fits a mysterious key belonging to his father, who died in the World Trade Center on 9/11. His search through the five boroughs of New York brings him into contact with many different characters. This story was a little heavy on the melodrama, and the character of the precocious child has been done to death, but I still enjoyed this story for what it was. I remember that the lock reveal at the end was a let down to me.

[bookomaniac-1 · Bewertung: 3 von 5 Sternen]

Dit boek verdient alleszins de prijs van de originaliteit: het verwerkt het grote trauma van Nine-eleven op een heel eigen manier, met originele verhalen vanuit diverse invalshoeken, met zwart-wit-illustraties en met typografische truukjes (zoals blanco pagina’s, almaar dichter op elkaar gedrukte letters enz.). Dit geeft op zich al aan dat Safran Foer eer betuigt aan hoe mensen omgaan met een bijzonder ingrijpende, we zouden nu zeggen, disruptieve gebeurtenis.Over de belangrijkste vertelstem, de 9-jarige Oskar Schell, is al heel wat geschreven, - zowel positief als negatief -, en ook voor mij heeft dit eigenwijze, overslimme, en sociaal gehandicapte jongetje zowel een afstotelijk als een aantrekkelijk kantje. Maar hij draagt deze roman wel. De bijkomende vertelstemmen van de oma en de grootvader zijn misschien even problematisch (en getuigend van soms erg surreëel menselijk gedrag) maar zij trekken Oskar’s verhaal van gemis, woede en onmacht ineens naar een veel diepere laag. Persoonlijk vond ik die delen van het boek veel interessanter, ze maakten veel tastbaarder hoe grote, “historische” gebeurtenissen ( Nine-eleven, Dresden, Hiroshima) een diepe, traumatische uitwerking hebben op concrete, “kleine” mensen, die heel dikwijls al in een heel complexe existentiële situatie zitten. Safran Foer wijst daarbij nergens op grote, definitieve oplossingen voor dit traumatische leed, tenzij het leven zelf en vooral de nabijheid, nabijheid van geliefden, het samen delen van vreugde en verdriet, gemis en verlangen. Schrijftechnisch put de auteur uit een rijk arsenaal aan literaire verwijzingen (die naar Gunter Grass en W.G. Sebald liggen voor de hand), en illustreert hij met kleine verhalen (zoals in het begin de zoektocht “zonder aanwijzingen” van Oskar in Central Park, of de raamvertelling van alle mensen met de naam Black waar hij langsgaat, met elk hun eigen verhaal) hoe mensen met het mysterie van lijden omgaan. Als vorm van therapeutisch schrijven (voor al wie geraakt is door Nine-Eleven) vind ik dit boek best geslaagd. Maar het doet me iets te geconstrueerd aan om van echt hele grote literatuur te spreken.

[razinha-1 · Bewertung: 3 von 5 Sternen]

Mixed reaction... On the one hand, I think Foer did well with the Asberger's/autism. BUT, I find the thoughts, language, experiences (classmates, other interactions) he related completely incongruous with the thoughts, language and experiences of a boy as young as his main character. Couple the very bizarre interludes that seem aligned with the character, but out of character for the characters being portrayed. I guess Foer used them as a devices to convey the different world of the autistic mind. Excellent primary narrative, averaged with substandard secondary stories, yields a middling three stars

[adrianburke_1 · Bewertung: 3 von 5 Sternen]

Do I like it? Or is it too cleverly manipulative? An adult's kids' book??

[shulera1 · Bewertung: 5 von 5 Sternen]

I picked up Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close at the suggestion of my friend's girlfriend. I don't really know this girl, since the two of them started dating fairly recently, but after talking to her for a bit, I thought she was really cool and I wanted to know more about her.

Fortunately, we started talking about books, which is one of the best ways to get to know someone. We exchanged favorites, and ELaIC was high on her list. I got it from the library the very next day and started reading almost immediately.

I loved it. The story was heart-wrenchingly sad and beautiful, but still remained believable. In addition to a good story, I found its style to be intriguing. Foer breaks a lot of traditional rules of writing, but I liked most of them. They felt right. Except the dialogue breaks. All the dialogue runs together and I'm not a big fan of that style, so if that kind of thing really bothers you, I probably wouldn't recommend it. If you can look past it, you really should try this out.

And now I feel like I understand my friend's girlfriend much better. Hopefully once you read this, you'll feel like you understand both of us.

[karenduff · Bewertung: 1 von 5 Sternen]

Only finished this book as I was reading it for a book group challenge otherwise it would have been abandoned.

[floratina · Bewertung: 4 von 5 Sternen]

READ IN DUTCH

My expectations were really high on this one! Many people told me just how much they enjoyed this book and how special it was.

For myself, I had to admit that I did like the title.



In the beginning I had to get used to the style and the use of different types throughout the story. After some time, that was fine, though not as great as I had hoped for. The story is a search in which I believed some steps were a bit too convenient for our main character. I found it interesting to read about the aftermath of 9/11, the effects it had on the people involved.



Overall, I liked reading it, but as happens quite often, when you have such great expectations, reality can't live up to it.

[gma2lana · Bewertung: 1 von 5 Sternen]

I started to read this book because it was a suggestion in the reading group that I am in. Key word in that sentence, STARTED. I Can't finish it. I see it as pointless, and very confusing. I feel I have wasted my reading time on something unbearably boring and did I say CONFUSING? I very rarely give up on books, in fact, I made it to page 170 in this...then looked at the reviews to see what it was that I was missing. My opinion, you either love it or hate it. I choose the latter.