Gigi Merebashvili – Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

This is a story in which the main character is a boy named Oscar. He is a curious boy, but he is scared of many things like public transport and skyscrapers because of his dad’s death on 9/11.I think that this book teaches us to try new things and take risks and that is exactly what Oscar’s grandpa is trying to teach his grandson.

Oscar was scared of bridges and did not want to cross them, so his grandpa continued walking so Oscar could catch up to him and conquer his fear by crossing the bridge. When I read the book, I searched for the film and watched it. After I finished watching, I compared the book and the movie. There were some differences like one character not being in the movie and that is Oscar’s grandma’s sister, Anna.

If somebody asked me if I preferred movies or books, I would choose books, but the choice would be hard, because they are both good and also bad in some ways. For example, you can visualize the characters by watching the movie but the book is going to be more detailed, and that is why I would read the book first and then watch the movie. 

When I read the book “Harry Potter”, I had not watched the movie, so I knew every part in detail, because it had much more dialogue and I could imagine the characters. When I watched the movie I was little disappointed. 

That is because it did not have the same degree of detail as the book had, but I saw the actors so what I imagined the characters to look like changed. During the Book Club lessons we read a lot of books, but the character I liked the most is Oscar’s grandpa from “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close”. I like him because he is so interesting and mysterious, he can be disliked and also liked, because sometimes he is a good person and sometimes he is not. For example he left his son and had not seen him since, but when he came back he was changed for the better. That is because he helped Oscar conquer his fears of public transport and crossing bridges. 

As Oscar got to know him better and found out that he was his grandfather, he loved him more and more.

Author: Gigi Merebashvili