Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close Reading Guide & Discussion Questions

Book Club Discussion Questions

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For supplemental discussion material see our Beyond the Book article, and our BookBrowse Review of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

Introduction

Meet Oskar Schell, an inventor, Francophile, tambourine player, Shakespearean actor, jeweler, pacifist, correspondent with Stephen Hawking and Ringo Starr. He is nine years old. And he is on an urgent, secret search through the five boroughs of New York. His 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.

An inspired innocent, Oskar is alternately endearing, exasperating, and hilarious as he careens from Central Park to Coney Island to Harlem on his search. Along the way he is always dreaming up inventions to keep those he loves safe from harm. What about a birdseed shirt to let you fly away? What if you could actually hear everyone's heartbeat? His goal is hopeful, but the past speaks a loud warning in stories of those who've lost loved ones before. As Oskar roams New York City, he encounters a motley assortment of people who are all survivors in their own way. He befriends a 103-year-old war reporter, a tour guide who never leaves the Empire State Building, and lovers enraptured or scorned. Ultimately, Oskar ends his journey where it began, at his father's grave. But now he is accompanied by the silent stranger who has been renting the spare room of his grandmother's apartment. They are there to dig up his father's empty coffin.

 

Discussion Questions

1. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close was published in 2005; many reviewers thought of it as the first major 9/11 novel.  What does it mean for a book to be a "9/11 novel"?  Does our sense of what a 9/11 novel is change over time?  How do you think the reading of this book differs now than from when it was first published? Do you think it will be read differently ten or twenty or fifty years from now?
2. Did reading the book bring back memories of 9/11 for you? Do you remember how you felt in the days and weeks that followed that event? Do you remember what scared you? What you were grateful for?
3. Similarly, the book could be called a New York novel. In what ways is the book's sense of place integral to the story being told? In what ways is the setting universal?

Unless otherwise stated, this discussion guide is reprinted with the permission of Mariner Books. Any page references refer to a USA edition of the book, usually the trade paperback version, and may vary in other editions.