Extremely loud …
… and incredibly close is waarskynlik een van die mees oorspronklike en authentic boeke wat ek in `n LANG tyd gelees het. Ek is nou eers op bladsy 86 en alklaar heeltemal verlore en verlief.
Die storie ontplooi teen die agtergrond van 9/11, maar word vertel deur die oe van `n baie eksentrieke kind wat sy pa se dood probeer verwerk. Ten spyte van die swaar, ernstige onderwerp is die boek tog nie hartseer nie, maar eerder `n mengsel van snaakse oomblikke, fyn observasies en `n hele paar lewenswaarhede. Bo en behalwe Oskar se kleurvolle gebruik van woorde is daar kleurbladsye, swart en wit foto’s uit sy dagboek en hoofstukke met rooi omkringde pen wat die storie aanvul, jou intrek in sy lewe en dalk op `n meer emosionele vlak ook die boek meer persoonlik maak.
Ek sou verseker Extremely loud & incredibly close op my lysie van boeke sit wat jy moet lees voor jy die hiernamaals binnegaan. As jy gelukkig is kan jy natuurlik ook binnekort die fliek sien (wat verseker nie die boek sal kan ewenaar nie) aangesien dit tans in preproduksie is.
Hier’s `n kort opsomming:
“Oskar Schell, hero of this brilliant follow-up to Foer’s bestselling Everything Is Illuminated, is a nine-year-old amateur inventor, jewelry designer, astrophysicist, tambourine player and pacifist. Like the second-language narrator of Illuminated, Oskar turns his naïvely precocious vocabulary to the understanding of historical tragedy, as he searches New York for the lock that matches a mysterious key left by his father when he was killed in the September 11 attacks, a quest that intertwines with the story of his grandparents, whose lives were blighted by the firebombing of Dresden. Foer embellishes the narrative with evocative graphics, including photographs, colored highlights and passages of illegibly overwritten text, and takes his unique flair for the poetry of miscommunication to occasionally gimmicky lengths, like a two-page soliloquy written entirely in numerical code. Although not quite the comic tour de force that Illuminated was, the novel is replete with hilarious and appalling passages, as when, during show-and-tell, Oskar plays a harrowing recording by a Hiroshima survivor and then launches into a Poindexterish disquisition on the bomb’s “charring effect.” It’s more of a challenge to play in the same way with the very recent collapse of the towers, but Foer gambles on the power of his protagonist’s voice to transform the cataclysm from raw current event to a tragedy at once visceral and mythical. Unafraid to show his traumatized characters’ constant groping for emotional catharsis, Foer demonstrates once again that he is one of the few contemporary writers willing to risk sentimentalism in order to address great questions of truth, love and beauty.”
Jy kan ook resensies en meer inligting hier kry: http://www.penguin.co.uk/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780141012698,00.html
