PositiveBookforumOskar's travels bring the novel its great momentum and wit, but it is a second story line, the epistolary tale of Oskar's grandparents—a mute sculptor and his sometime muse, both of whom survived the World War II bombing of Dresden—that gives the tale its heart … Through the powerful linkage of historical explosions, from Dresden to Nagasaki to the Twin Towers, framed in a universe that is itself slowly exploding, Foer's imagery begins to roil with the mythopoetic physics of a rabbinic fairy tale … Impressively, the book's bells and whistles actually feel appropriate to its larger meaning, rather than coming across as mere gimmickry. How many ways, in how many mediums, Foer seems to be asking, can we miss each other?
