As with many children who experience trauma or loss of a close parent at an early age, Oskar has lost some of his childhood innocence, and expects the world of adults to be one of pain. His worldview has grown jaded because of the deep depression he feels over both his father’s death and his own personal failings. Here, when his mother asks him whether he is an optimist or pessimist, he replies with a definitive statement of the latter. Oskar wants to be optimist like his father was, but he finds life after 09/11 problematic.

But now he is accompanied by the silent stranger who has been renting the spare room of his grandmother's apartment.“Nothing is beautiful and true.” Oskar to his mother, p. Ultimately, Oskar ends his journey where it began, at his father's grave. He befriends a 103-year-old war reporter, a tour guide who never leaves the Empire State Building, and lovers enraptured or scorned. As Oskar roams New York, he encounters a motley assortment of humanity who are all survivors in their own way. What about a birdseed shirt to let you fly away? What if you could actually hear everyone's heartbeat? His goal is hopeful, but the past speaks a loud warning in stories of those who've lost loved ones before. Along the way he is always dreaming up inventions to keep those he loves safe from harm. An inspired innocent, Oskar is alternately endearing, exasperating, and hilarious as he careens from Central Park to Coney Island to Harlem on his search. His mission is to find the lock that fits a mysterious key belonging to his father, who died in the World Trade Center on 9/11. And he is on an urgent, secret search through the five boroughs of New York.

Meet Oskar Schell, an inventor, Francophile, tambourine player, Shakespearean actor, jeweler, pacifist, correspondent with Stephen Hawking and Ringo Starr. What he discovers is solace in that most human quality, imagination. Now, with humor, tenderness, and awe, he confronts the traumas of our recent history. Jonathan Safran Foer emerged as one of the most original writers of his generation with his best-selling debut novel, Everything Is Illuminated.

Summary: A new novel by the author of Everything Is Illuminated introduces Oskar Schell, the nine-year-old son of a man killed in the World Trade Center bombing who searches the city for a lock that fits a black key his father left behind.

Incredibly loud book