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I knew nothing about this book other than my “literati�� friends all highly recommended it. It was good, as in really well written. And from page one, I was hooked. I enjoyed Oskar the narrator, a nine-year-old boy who asked a lot of questions. It reminded me how easy it is, as an adult, to forget to be curious. Oskar made observations that I found witty and humorous and real. Real in the sense that I have heard other people make similar observations or ones that may have crossed my mind.

For me, this book was like a can of Pringles (or I suppose I should say a bag of Lays)—“you just can’t eat one.�� And before you know it, you’ve gone and eaten the whole can. Had I not had kindle issues, I probably would have finished it the first day I started it. That doesn’t mean I think this is a “fluff�� book. It is well written. I enjoyed the styles the author chose to insert throughout the story. I think it captured the feeling of the various people Oskar met along the way. Some readers may find it “gimmicky�� but I felt it was a visual representation to each personality, and so I enjoyed it.

The only part I felt Foer faltered big time was when Oskar went to the Empire State Building. The whole scene felt contrived and unreal. As a huge fan of New York City, I felt this book was a love letter to the city. And so while I understood you can’t really do a book on NYC without mentioning the Empire State Building, the dialogue and the scenario amongst the characters felt really untrue to the story as a whole. It was too precious and gooey and sentimental—like Foer watched Sleepless in Seattle one too many times and somehow owed Meg Ryan a mushy scene.

Also, I wasn’t really thrilled with the grandparents�� story felt too disjointed and because the story came out in dribbles, it got a bit bogged down in the innuendos to the point where it got tedious and confusing. I felt like saying to both of them, “get on with it already.��

That said, Foer managed to turn everything around at the end and connected the dots of all these different parts really well. I love a good “rip-your-heart-out�� ending and Foer puts in a doozy.

All-in-all, I would recommend this to most readers and I look forward to reading his other works.