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Like a lot of people who pay attention to these kinds of things I'm very interested in the search for The Great 9/11 Novel. It is the big event of our times and we're starting to see a variety of authors try to tackle the subject. Probably the first notable 9/11 novel is this book which came out a couple of years ago.

It is the story of Oscar Schell, a precocious 9 year old who idolizes Stephen Hawking, plays the tambourine and loves all things French. He also really loved his father who died in the World Trade Center on 9/11. Oscar's father used to challenge him with scavenger hunts across Central Park and fairy tales about the forgotten 6th borough of New York. A year after his death, Oscar discovers an envelope inside a vase in his father's closet. It contains a key and has the word "Black" written in red marker on it. Determined to learn the mystery of what his father has left behind, Oscar goes on a journey to find the lock that this key opens.

Oscar's journey takes him across all the boroughs of New York as he visits everyone in the phonebook with the last name of Black. Each Mr. and Mrs. Black he meets is more interesting than the next. Each has a story of their own and Oscar's open and inquisitive nature is what gets him inside each of their lives.

I loved this book and I loved the character of Oscar. He's too smart for his own good but he's still filled with the hopeful optimism of a child even though 9/11 has taken away a lot of his childhood innocence. As a 9/11 book it certainly deals with the grief that many people experienced that day. When Oscar listens to the answering machine messages his father left from the WTC you share the same chills that Oscar is feeling. The book is probably successful as a 9/11 novel because it doesn't try to view that day from a level any higher than Oscar's vantage point.

My only problem with the book is that the narrative is broken up among three characters: Oscar, his grandmother and his grandfather. When the other two were telling their story I found myself bored, waiting for Oscar to return, and also at times annoyed by the affected literariness of the grandparents thought patterns and dialogue especially when speaking to each other. Having the grandmother describe her first sexual experience in a letter to her grandson was too weird to be believed. It's one of those instances when the literary device of writing a letter stops making sense if you keep in mind who the letter is being written to. However, once their stories began to intersect more with the main Oscar story I started to forgive how close they brought me to disliking the book.

One bit of disappointment I felt with this book is that I choice to listen to the audiobook rather than read it. About halfway through I decided to take a look at the book in the store and found it was filled with visuals (gimmickry maybe, but still) that you miss out on by merely listening.

Posted at October 16, 2006 05:26 PM