In this past week I have begun to read Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and to tell the truth, I am thoroughly enjoying it so far. I definitely understand how one would find this boring or untasteful due to the character of Oskar, but I for one find him fascinating.
As I said in class, I have a developmentally delayed brother, and I have found one of the most intriguing things about him, is learning how he thinks. Getting inside that brain of his and figuring out how it functions the way it does. How socially awkward he is while yearning for human contact at the same time. Why he gets attached to certain (what we would think of as irrelevant) subjects and learns all he can about them, but yet he cannot tie his shoe or ride a bike. How he has the mind of a 7 year old (or less depending on the day), and yet his vocabulary exceeds mine at times. (and he understand what the word means!). How little things in his routine, like getting the Sunday Paper every week just for the comics, become the most important thing to him. When you live with an Autistic child you really understand how fascinating it is.
A lot of what I have read of Oskar thus far shows signs of him being developmentally delayed in some fashion. He is socially awkward in the limo but yearns for the drivers attention all at the same time. His logic is intriguing on jewelry and inventing, but giving a stranger the key to his house makes perfect sense to him. His actions at times shows his age and at other times exceeds or diminishes his true age through simple things like crude jokes or advanced vocabulary. He refuses to wear any color except for white, and that is extremely important to him.
All that being said, this book has already hit home with me and I’m only a few chapters in. I cannot wait to figure out the whole story line behind his family, and Oskar himself. :)