“Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close,” by Jonathan Safran Foer, is a 2005 novel following a precocious child on a desperate quest to find something of his late father. Though the book was published four years ago, the events that triggered Oskar’s frantic search still trigger something equally desperate in many of us. The book is set in 2003, two years after Oskar’s father is killed in New York City on Sept. 11, 2001. I felt it an especially relevant selection for this week, given the recent anniversary of the events eight years ago. As that day is fresh and sharp to Oskar Schell, this novel is a sharp and fresh take on post-Sept. 11 society, our society. It makes a use of recent historical events in an original way. The first modern-day problem novel, to my knowledge, to incorporate Sept. 11 in such a crucial and poignant way.

Plot devices and narrative technique aside – and both are enormously creative and not anything to be set aside – Foer uses an almost interactive method of visually aiding the reader into seeing what Oskar sees. Fonts, page layout and photographs manipulate to bring us into the world as it is seen by this Manhattanite boy, and, provocatively, as Foer seems to want us to see it – or at least, contemplate seeing.

Delightful and intriguing as the characters are, and Oskar is certainly not the only one we meet, there is some sensitive material in real-life photographs from Sept. 11, as well as some intense language.

Like his first novel, “Everything is Illuminated,” the book uses a highly contemporary and modernized setting and narrator to tell a moving and sometimes tragic, but fascinating, tale of the effects of war. However, “Illuminated,” which was made into a quirky but insightful film of the same name (starring Elijah Wood and an ingenious soundtrack) weaves in and out of Holocaust history and present-day Ukraine.

With “Close,” Foer touches on parallels between Oskar’s world and that of Dresden WWII, but for the most part sticks to a present time and does the weaving, instead, through the lives of seeming strangers, the parts of life that you can’t discern from walking past someone on the street, but instead by letting yourself in as Oskar does and discovering an interconnectedness that may well affect us all.

This Friday The Utah Statesman is introducing a new column by staff writer Chelsey Gensel, who will review a book every other week. The column will feature books newly published as well as old favorites. Suggestions for books can be e-mailed to Chelsey at pulcre.puella@gmail.com, and for the next week she will be accepting suggestions for the name of the column.

Chelsey’s favorite books are the Harry Potter series, “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” “Looking for Alaska,” “Stranger in a Strange Land” and dozens of others which can be found on her Facebook profile. Favorite genres are young adult fiction, sci-fi and fantasy and classic novels.