Oskar Schell - Critical Response

Critical Response

Critical response towards Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close has been generally less positive than for Foer's first novel, Everything Is Illuminated; John Updike, writing for The New Yorker, found the second novel to be "thinner, overextended, and sentimentally watery," stating that "the book's hyperactive visual surface covers up a certain hollow monotony in its verbal drama." In a New York Times review Michiko Kakutani said, "While it contains moments of shattering emotion and stunning virtuosity that attest to Mr. Foer's myriad gifts as a writer, the novel as a whole feels simultaneously contrived and improvisatory, schematic and haphazard." Kakutani also stated the book was "cloying" and identified the unsympathetic main character as a major issue. Anis Shivani said similarly in a Huffington Post article entitled "The 15 Most Overrated Contemporary American Writers," claiming Foer "Rode the 9/11-novel gravy train with Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, giving us a nine-year-old with the brain of a twenty-eight-year-old Jonathan Safran Foer."

Despite several unfavorable reviews, the novel was viewed positively by several critics. The Spectator stated that "Safran Foer is describing a suffering that spreads across continents and generations" and that the "book is a heartbreaker: tragic, funny, intensely moving". "Foer's excellent second novel vibrates with the details of a current tragedy but successfully explores the universal questions that trauma brings on its floodtide," wrote Rebecca Miller of Library Journal. "It's hard to believe that such an inherently sad story could be so entertaining, but Foer's writing lightens the load."