Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer

In the aftermath of 911, nine-year-old Oskar Schell struggles with the loss of his father whose calls from the burning World Trade Center he heard on the answering machine while he was alone in the family's apartment in New York City. Jonathan Safran Foer puts the reader in the head of this highly imaginative and sensitive boy as he seeks for meaning in the life and death of his father. The result is sometimes hilarious, but mostly poignant. The back story about his grandparents is a little too bizarre to be believable, but being in Oskar's mind is wonderful even though he often has "heavy boots" and is not feeling "one hundred dollars."

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close would be a good book for discussion, but I probably won't suggest it for my book club, beause I think they would find it weird and perhaps too challanging -- Oskar's voice is distinctive, but narration sometimes switches to other characters and can be a little hard to follow.

March by Geraldine Brooks

The little women of Louisa May Alcott's famous novel were mostly without their father who was away at the Civil War. In March author Geraldine Brooks imagines the adventures of the absent father who joined the Northern Army as a chaplain. Before leaving, he had cast his family into poverty by giving his wealth away in support of abolitionist John Brown. So the March family in Concord, MA struggled to keep body and soul together while Dad went off to fight for the Union and the abolitionist cause.

March is wonderfully imagined and drawn. Brooks is subtle and nuanced in her portrayal of March as an idealist who worries about his courage, his worth, and what role he should be playing in life. A strong underlying theme in the story is the lack of communication between Mr. and Mrs. March. In our book club we talked about how the experiences each had endured during their prolonged separation would impact the marriage. It was clear that March would be returning home a profoundly different man.