3 Stars
Pros: Poignant, deep, sad. It makes you realize how truly important life is and to cherish every single moment you're given because you don't know when it will be your last. The mystery of the key in the vase was a good hook to give the novel momentum and get it going.
Cons: At first the narrative is scattered and rambling and I was tempted to put it down. But after awhile it started to make more sense/Oskar is definitely on the spectrum, so sometimes his observations seem a little from left field and it takes some getting used to.
Full Review:
It's been about two years since, Oskar Schell's Father, Thomas Schell, died in the collapse of the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001. It's a day that marked the world forever and for Oskar, it changes his entire life. He was always close to his father, was just as intelligent and curious and had a special bond. So when his father dies, Oskar struggles. It's understandable, he's young, he's emotional, he's not sure what to feel. And he wants closure. He wants to know exactly how his father died. And when he is snooping in his father's closet and finds a small key in an envelope at the bottom of a vase, he realizes that the key may reveal something about his father that he never knew.
He sets off to discover all he can about that key and on the way, he meets so many new people and learns so many new things. He grows so much as a person and face so many of his fears and yet, he never seems to notice it. All the while, his mother is dismissive, uninterested, nonchalant and Oskar wonders why she never asks him where he's going. It isn't until much later in the novel that the reader finds out why. And that was the real hook of the novel.
They key was the bait because just as much as Oskar, the reader wanted to find out about that key, but as Oskar learns more and the reader learns more, the world becomes so much more complex but so much more intimate all at once. The revelation near the end is what caught me hook, line and sinker and had me close to tears.
It's a tough novel at times. I was tearing up imagining a young child mourning the loss of his father. And also the narrative of his grandmother and her 'balanced on the edge of a knife" love life was just as rough. She survived the bombings in Dresden and found her sister's boyfriend when she came to America. They married but there was never love. But again, connections are made, lines are cast, and everyone is tied to everyone else in ways that the reader can't even imagine. Foer weaves all of the lines into a beautiful and touching web by the end.
I had a tough time starting this novel. Oskar's rapid fire observations and strange behaviors were irritating and the switching narratives were confusing. But once I became more invested, it paid off in the end. This was a deeply moving novel about love, life and how precious every moment we're given is. I'd been meaning to read it for a long time and now, I'm glad that I did.
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