A new semester = a new book

Ekaterina Kolbina
2 min readSep 23, 2021

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A new semester means…a new book for Individual reading.

This time my choice fell on the story that had been alluring to me for some time. This is “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” by Jonathan Safran Foer that depicts the life of mere citizens after 9/11. However, it is not a lean documentary book inspired by real events. The story is narrated from the perspective of a 9-year-old boy, Oskar. The style of the author reminded me of “The Catcher in the Rye” by J. Salinger. The story is tragic: Oskar’s father died in the September 11 attacks. Despite his young age, the boy was prone to analyzing things and solving puzzles (even where there were no puzzles). As the story unfolded, Oskar found a mysterious key in a vase on the top shelf in his father’s room. From that point, Oskar started his investigation.

Unfortunately, there was no opportunity to cover much of the book but the first thing that met my eye was the phrase “I was zipping up the sleeping bag of myself”. As I didn’t find such an idiom, I suppose it is an author’s metaphor, an elegant way to say “to go into one’s shell; stop sharing one’s feelings and emotions” .

I am zealous to know what that key can open. Hence, I assume that it will not take me much time to finish the book.

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