Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

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. He befriends a 103-year-old war reporter, a tour guide who never leaves the Empire State Building, and lovers enraptured or scorned. Ultimately, Oskar ends his journey where it began, at his father's grave. But now he is accompanied by the silent stranger who has been renting the spare room of his grandmother's apartment. Oskar reminisces about his father and the games they used to play. The games often involved Oskar having to solve a mystery. His father would give him very subtle clues, challenging Oskar's intelligence. Oskar and his dad were very much in tune to one another and had a similar type of intelligence. They understood one another, seemingly better than Oskar's mother comprehended either of them. Or at least, this is what Oskar implies. In his letters, Oskar asks these famous scientists for jobs. He usually receives standard form-letter responses, but every once in a while someone compliments Oskar's intelligence. Like his private letters, readers quickly learn that Oskar tends to keep secrets. The main one includes his father's last five phone messages on the answering machine. Oskar's dad was at a meeting at the Twin Towers on the day of the terrorists' attacks. His father was in one of the towers above where the planes struck. The five phone messages are progressively more panicked as the fires grow worse. Oskar is the only one who has heard the messages because he hides the phone after he listens to them. Then he goes out and buys an identical phone so his mother would not notice. Oskar has, up to this point, never told anyone about the messages. Oskar’s grandfather writes several letters to his son (Thomas Schell). In these letters he apologizes to his son that he left his mother before Thomas was born and that he had never come back again. In chapters entitled “MY FEELINGS” Oskar`s grandma writes letters to Oskar