not a beach read

Yesterday, I finished "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" by Jonathan Safran Foer. It is about a family who loses someone in 9-11. (It's fiction.) I don't know if any of you have read this, and I hesitate to make a blanket suggestion that you do. It is very tender and sad. I wasn't surprised by either of those things. What did surprise me was the type of sad, if that makes sense. In the novel, there is one character in particular who never really recovers from the pain of great loss in his life, and he goes on to abandon his family in the name of self-preservation. (I'm not giving anything away here.) Pretty much all of the characters are in various stages of recovery and non-recovery from a painful loss of a loved one, and it is interesting to see how they handle the pain. I guess if you are okay reading a book that leaves you with a certain amount of uncertainty and feel you can handle the delicate content, then I suggest it. I can't determine if the uncertainty in the book was intentional disregard or slapdash editing, but either way, it was an interesting read worth the perspective it may provide.