Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Any recommendations, let me know.

So coming back to Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, for anybody that hasn't read it, what's it about?

So it's about a young boy, a nine-year-old boy living in New York City called Oscar, whose father has died around about a year ago.

And he died in, it's okay to divulge information, Absolutely.

I mean, I

think it happened so early on in the book that it's not a spoiler.

to a series of voice messages from his dad from one of the towers calling to try and make contact with him and essentially telling him the situation and trying to say goodbye.

And this is something that Oscar has to live with and try to process in the context of a very small family, just him and his mum, where his mum is not that emotionally available, understandably.

And he goes on these...

Very curious adventures to try to find the answer, try to find the lock to a key, which is quite symbolic.

There's a literal key, but there's a lot of symbolism in that journey.

And I think it's just fascinating to sort of think about, you know, how it's been set up at the beginning.

And I was a little bit worried and thinking, you know, this is a novel and people have sort of said, oh, well, you know, it's a grief novel.

And is it going to be desperately, desperately sad? And I think one of the things that...

is really important is that yes, there is sadness and yes, there is this real sense of loss and this big hole in Oscar's life, but there are also adventures and friendships and contacts through the book.

And actually there is this real overarching message of sometimes things happen and we don't know why they happen.

And yet sometimes they do open other doors and it's absolutely not at any point minimizing this enormous loss that he has in his life.

But actually there is that real sense that if his father hadn't died, if he hadn't found a vase in his father's cupboard, accidentally smashed the vase and found a key inside the vase, none of this would ever have happened.

And yet he beat

so many people along the way.

So serendipitous, isn't it? And there's such unlikely friendships that he develops.

He really gets himself out there in a way that you might not expect of a character like his who doesn't even eat food that's not in an individual wrapper.