Foer’s Voice Comes in ‘Loud’ and Clear

One of the pleasures of reading \"Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close,\" Jonathan Safran Foer\'s absorbing new novel, is that the experience helped me understand why I was so incapable of enjoying Foer\'s first book, the into-30-languages-translated, into-major-motion-picture-being-made \"Everything Is Illuminated\" -- or why (to take the blame off myself) that last book, published in 2002, was so ill suited to being enjoyed by me. I\'m even thinking of making a peace offering to \"Everything Is Illuminated,\" trying to reach some sort of détente, maybe seeing if we\'d prefer each other\'s company the second time around.