Based on the sometimes-exasperated reviews of Foer's second novel, I imagined it to be irritatingly gimmicky. Photos of keyholes? Nearly blank pages? Nearly black pages? Argh. I didn't seek it out or add it to any wishlists. But on my first visit to the Cleveland Park library, there it was on the New Arrivals shelf. I gave it a shot.

The truth is I really, really liked this book. (Just after I started it, another book I was eager to read and had put on hold, Zadie Smith's On Beauty, came in, but I found myself unable to put this one down.) That's not to say I don't think Foer tries too hard sometimes, and misses sometimes. But when he hits it, which is often, it's incredibly moving. More than once I found my eyes filled with tears as I pictured little Oskar, the 9-year-old protagonist. He is trying desperately to get over, and at the same time not get over, his father's death on 9/11. He resents what he perceives as his mother's moving on. Obsessed with their loved ones' safety and unable to sleep, he and his grandmother, who lived through a terrifying attack in Dresden as a girl, whose husband left her 40 years ago, talk on walkie-talkies at night. He visits total strangers, seeking the lock that matches the key he has found, and gets glimpses into their own sad and lonely lives.

In the end the mystery is solved, but not solved, and Oskar starts to move on from his father's death, which he will never get over.